eBay's online payment division and the global leader in online payments, PayPal, has added a new withdrawal feature for its Philippine and Indonesian members, allowing them to conveniently withdraw funds from their PayPal accounts to their local bank accounts.
Philippine and Indonesian Bank Account Withdrawals
How does it work?
- How to add a Bank Account
- How do I withdraw the money
-Which bank can I use to withdraw my money?
-How long does it take for funds to reach my bank account?
-Are there any minimum or maximum withdrawal amounts?
-Are there any requirements that I must fulfill before I can withdraw my funds?
-Can I still withdraw funds to a US bank account?
-Can I still withdraw funds to a Visa debit, credit, or prepaid card?
-Can I withdraw US Dollars to my US Dollar denominated Philippine or Indonesian bank account?
-What currency will be transferred from my PayPal account to my local bank account?
-How much does it cost?
Important information for Indonesian users
How does it work?
How to add a bank account?
In just a few easy steps, you can add your Philippine or Indonesian bank account to your PayPal account in order to conveniently withdraw your money.
Step 1: Log into your PayPal account
Click the 'Profile' tab and then click 'Add or Edit Bank Account.
Step 2: Add your bank details
For Philippine users, the bank code is a 9-digit number. This number is different from a SWIFT code required to send international wires. Please refer to our list of bank codes.
For Indonesian users, the bank code is a 7-digit number. This number is different from a SWIFT code required to send international wires. The 7-digit number assigned to each bank is typically used as an identifier to complete a local or domestic money transfer. Please call your bank to obtain the 7-digit bank code which designates your particular bank branch and location.
Add your local Indonesian or Philippine bank account details and click 'Continue’.
Step 3: Review your bank account information
Review your bank information and click 'Add Bank Account' to confirm.
Step 4: Confirmation
How do I withdraw the money?
Step 1: Log into your PayPal account
Click the 'My Account' tab and then click the 'Withdraw' sub tab.
Step 2: Select the 'Withdraw funds to your bank account' option
For Philippine users, withdrawals equal or more than PHP 7,000 are free. For withdrawal amounts of less than PHP 7,000, there will be a fee of PHP 50.
Step 3: Select the bank account and amount to withdraw
Important: You must become a verified PayPal member in order to withdraw funds from your account. To start the verification process using your credit card, please click the 'Lift this limit' link on the "Withdraw funds to your bank account" page, or learn more first.
Please note verification may take 3-4 business days to complete.
Step 4: Confirm the transfer
Which bank can I use to withdraw my money?
All local banks can be used to withdraw the funds.
How long does it take for funds to reach my bank account?
It typically takes 5-7 business days. However, depending on your bank’s policies, it may take longer.
Are there any minimum or maximum withdrawal amounts?
No, once you are a verified PayPal member, there are no minimum withdrawal amounts or maximum withdrawal amounts. However, non-verified PayPal members will not be permitted to make withdrawals of any amount. Learn more about verification.
Are there any requirements that I must fulfill before I can withdraw my funds?
You will need to add a bank account and also become a verified PayPal member.
Learn how to become a verified PayPal member now.
Can I still withdraw funds to a US bank account?
Yes, the functionality to withdraw your PayPal balance to a US bank account is still available.
Can I still withdraw funds to a Visa debit, credit, or prepaid card?
Yes, the functionality to withdraw your PayPal balance to a Visa debit card, credit card, or prepaid card is still available.
Learn more.
Can I withdraw US Dollars to a US Dollar denominated Philippine or Indonesian bank account?
No. At this time, PayPal only supports withdrawal to Peso or Rupiah bank accounts located in the Philippines or Indonesia. However, you can withdraw funds in US Dollars, if you have a United States bank account. Add a United States bank account to your PayPal account now.
What currency will be transferred from my PayPal account to my local bank account?
Regardless of the foreign currency (USD, EUR, AUD, etc.) you are withdrawing from your PayPal account, the funds will be converted to your local currency.
For example, if you are in the Philippines, your withdrawal will be converted into Pesos and transferred to your local bank account. If you are in Indonesia, your withdrawal will be converted into Rupiahs and transferred to your local bank account.
How much does it cost?
For Philippine users, withdrawals of PHP 7,000 or more are free. For withdrawal amounts less than PHP 7,000 there will be a fee of PHP 50. For Indonesian users, withdrawals of IDR 1.5 million or more are free. For withdrawal amounts of less than IDR 1.5 million, there will be a fee of IDR 16,000.
Foreign exchange fees may also apply. Check our schedule of fees for details. Please note that some banks charge their customers a fee for electronic funds transfers. PayPal can make no assurances that you will not be charged by your bank. Please ask your bank whether it charges for electronic fund transfers before you initiate a withdrawal.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Friday, January 25, 2008
Make Money on the Internet
* Adbrite - Sell space on your site for text ads
* Amazon Affiliate Program - Easily create a store or shopping section on your site instead of sending your visitors to Amazon. Amazon handles the shopping cart and fulfillment.
* Amazon Seller - Sell your stuff on Amazon
* Associated Content - If you write a story, how-to, rant, etc. you can submit it to them and they will pay you $3-$20 per article if they like it
* Azoogleads - Another ad program. They do have some decent companies lined up as advertisers. You provide space, they'll provide an ad.
* BidVertiser - PPC (pay per click) program with a low $10 payout amount.
* Bravenet - These guys offer a ton of services for webmasters and blog owners. Although I feel like I was spammed for a while, it has ceased and they'll pay you $1 for each person you send over
* Blog - Start a blog and consistently write excellent content. With good ad placement, you may make some money.
* Business Opportunities Blog - I am adding this because I am a subscriber to their site and I see ideas everyday that could result in making money. A lot of the ideas pertain to online businesses. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, it's a good reference.
* Cafepress - You provide a design, they'll toss it on a T-Shirt, Hat, etc. No upfront costs. Get a free online shop and promote your products on your website.
* Chitika - Their eMiniMalls service has shown great results for many Bloggers and site owners. You choose a keyword and they show relevant products on your site using a pretty unique interface.
* Clickbank - Another Affiliate Program site with 10,000+ products to advertise
* ClicknWork - Get paid $5-$150 per hour for basically doing freelance work on a per-assignment basis. You have to pass a pretty tough test to get in.
* Clicksor - These are the guys that generate contextual ads on sites that show up when you hover over a double-underlined word.
* Commission Junction - If you have a site, you can join Commission Junction. Once enrolled for free, you can choose companies whose ads are pertinent to your site. Companies have the ultimate say on working with you. There are easily over 1,000 companies to choose from here.
* CreamAid - For blogs only, advertisers provide you with a topic and you write about it on your site. To do this, you have to install a flash widget into your blog post. The more people you bring into the conversation through the widget, the more you get paid. It's difficult to explain.
* eefoof - Think of it as YouTube + Flickr + Music. You add original content and they pay you based on the visitors you attract.
* Ether - If you are an expert on something, Ether provides a way for people to pay you to talk about it in a one-on-one setting. If you want to charge $250/hr, that's fine. You have to do all the advertising so you should have a blog or site already established.
* eBay - Come on, you know what this is. Gather your junk and sell it!
* eBay Stores - If you have a real store and want to sell your stuff online, this is a decent option to get you started.
* ELance - Name gives it away. Programmers, Codes, Web Designers, Writers, Editors, can look for freelance opportunities.
* Feedvertising - This is an arm of Text Link Ads and is currently only good for Wordpress 2.0 Users. This does me no good currently, but as you can guess, they place ads in your feed(s).
* Feedburner - Not only are they the best place to house your feeds, they will also add ads to your feed and website. You get paid per impression.
* Google Adsense - Come on, you don't need an explanation. These ads are all over the place. Google displays relevant ads based on your site's content
* Google Adwords - Create simple text ads and choose keywords that determine when they are displayed. This is where the Adsense Content comes from. You do not need a site for this.
* SHUT DOWN Google Answers - If you are good, Google will pay you to answer questions in your specialty. Questions all come from normal people like you and me. You can get paid $2.50+ per answer you provide.
* H3.com - Get paid to fill jobs. Commissions range from $50-$5,000. It all depends on how tough the job is to fill and how desperate the hiring company is. This is another one that's tough to explain.
* Indeed.com - Add their job board to your site. They then post jobs based on the geographic location of visitors and the position types you pre-select. I tried it and I they continually report that I sent 0 visitors and I know that's not right. Nevertheless, I may have an isolated problem so they make the list.
* InnerSell - If you have a customer that wants to buy something you cannot sell, you can sell the lead here.
* Jellyfish - This is a shopping site that pays you a percentage of the purchases made by people you refer. They are not part of a wider affiliate program so you do it direct.
* Jigsaw - It's a pretty flaky model but if you have a Rolodex full of good contacts, you can sell them here. I can't make sense of it but it looks like you get $0.10 per profile.
* KarmaOne - They are basically a recruiting website. If you fill one of their jobs by finding a good candidate, you'll get paid anywhere from $50-$12,000. It all depends on how desperate the hiring company is.
* LinkShare.com - If you have a site, you can join Linkshare. Once enrolled for free, you can choose companies whose ads are pertinent to your site. Companies have the ultimate say on working with you. Like Commission Junction, there are a ton of companies waiting to evaluate your site.
* Microsoft Adcenter - Bid on keywords and Microsoft places your created ads then they are searched for. This is similar to Google Adwords. You do not need a site for this.
* Overstock.com - Sell your stuff on Overstock.com
* Pageflakes - This is a company that developed a user-defined Ajax homepage to show feeds, flickr photos, and a ton of other things. Think of it as a replacement for your Google Homepage. Anyway - they'll pay you $1 per referral that you send over. They are not part of a wider affiliate program so you do it direct. This one is pretty simple.
* Pay Per Post - I don't agree with this model entirely but they have advertisers that will pay you to write about their products on your blog.
* Pheedo - If you have an RSS feed, run it through Pheedo. Like Feedburner, they can include ads into your feed and if you really become large, advertisers will pay a premium for you to show their ads.
* Shareasale.com - I've never really worked with them but I do have an account. They are similar to Commission Junction and Linkshare however they seem to have lower tiered companies with advertising offers.
* Shoemoney - This is a blog that can teach you a ton on making money online. I've spent hours reading his old stuff.
* Software Judge - They will pay you up to $50 to review software.
* Text Link Ads - I have never made a dime here but I know people that have. You can earn by sending advertisers to them or by selling spots on your site. You must have a real site or blog to do this - nothing on a shared domain (i.e. /blogspot).
* Vibrant Media - Don't bother unless your site has 500,000 page views of text based content a month. If you have that readership, these are the guys that display bubble box ads to underlined words on your site.
* West Work At Home Agent - Not entirely online but this is worth a mention because it's won awards and is very legitimate. If you are an at-home Mom or free-lancer without work, you should check this out.
* Yahoo Publisher Network- This is the Yahoo version of Google Adsense.
* Amazon Affiliate Program - Easily create a store or shopping section on your site instead of sending your visitors to Amazon. Amazon handles the shopping cart and fulfillment.
* Amazon Seller - Sell your stuff on Amazon
* Associated Content - If you write a story, how-to, rant, etc. you can submit it to them and they will pay you $3-$20 per article if they like it
* Azoogleads - Another ad program. They do have some decent companies lined up as advertisers. You provide space, they'll provide an ad.
* BidVertiser - PPC (pay per click) program with a low $10 payout amount.
* Bravenet - These guys offer a ton of services for webmasters and blog owners. Although I feel like I was spammed for a while, it has ceased and they'll pay you $1 for each person you send over
* Blog - Start a blog and consistently write excellent content. With good ad placement, you may make some money.
* Business Opportunities Blog - I am adding this because I am a subscriber to their site and I see ideas everyday that could result in making money. A lot of the ideas pertain to online businesses. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, it's a good reference.
* Cafepress - You provide a design, they'll toss it on a T-Shirt, Hat, etc. No upfront costs. Get a free online shop and promote your products on your website.
* Chitika - Their eMiniMalls service has shown great results for many Bloggers and site owners. You choose a keyword and they show relevant products on your site using a pretty unique interface.
* Clickbank - Another Affiliate Program site with 10,000+ products to advertise
* ClicknWork - Get paid $5-$150 per hour for basically doing freelance work on a per-assignment basis. You have to pass a pretty tough test to get in.
* Clicksor - These are the guys that generate contextual ads on sites that show up when you hover over a double-underlined word.
* Commission Junction - If you have a site, you can join Commission Junction. Once enrolled for free, you can choose companies whose ads are pertinent to your site. Companies have the ultimate say on working with you. There are easily over 1,000 companies to choose from here.
* CreamAid - For blogs only, advertisers provide you with a topic and you write about it on your site. To do this, you have to install a flash widget into your blog post. The more people you bring into the conversation through the widget, the more you get paid. It's difficult to explain.
* eefoof - Think of it as YouTube + Flickr + Music. You add original content and they pay you based on the visitors you attract.
* Ether - If you are an expert on something, Ether provides a way for people to pay you to talk about it in a one-on-one setting. If you want to charge $250/hr, that's fine. You have to do all the advertising so you should have a blog or site already established.
* eBay - Come on, you know what this is. Gather your junk and sell it!
* eBay Stores - If you have a real store and want to sell your stuff online, this is a decent option to get you started.
* ELance - Name gives it away. Programmers, Codes, Web Designers, Writers, Editors, can look for freelance opportunities.
* Feedvertising - This is an arm of Text Link Ads and is currently only good for Wordpress 2.0 Users. This does me no good currently, but as you can guess, they place ads in your feed(s).
* Feedburner - Not only are they the best place to house your feeds, they will also add ads to your feed and website. You get paid per impression.
* Google Adsense - Come on, you don't need an explanation. These ads are all over the place. Google displays relevant ads based on your site's content
* Google Adwords - Create simple text ads and choose keywords that determine when they are displayed. This is where the Adsense Content comes from. You do not need a site for this.
* SHUT DOWN Google Answers - If you are good, Google will pay you to answer questions in your specialty. Questions all come from normal people like you and me. You can get paid $2.50+ per answer you provide.
* H3.com - Get paid to fill jobs. Commissions range from $50-$5,000. It all depends on how tough the job is to fill and how desperate the hiring company is. This is another one that's tough to explain.
* Indeed.com - Add their job board to your site. They then post jobs based on the geographic location of visitors and the position types you pre-select. I tried it and I they continually report that I sent 0 visitors and I know that's not right. Nevertheless, I may have an isolated problem so they make the list.
* InnerSell - If you have a customer that wants to buy something you cannot sell, you can sell the lead here.
* Jellyfish - This is a shopping site that pays you a percentage of the purchases made by people you refer. They are not part of a wider affiliate program so you do it direct.
* Jigsaw - It's a pretty flaky model but if you have a Rolodex full of good contacts, you can sell them here. I can't make sense of it but it looks like you get $0.10 per profile.
* KarmaOne - They are basically a recruiting website. If you fill one of their jobs by finding a good candidate, you'll get paid anywhere from $50-$12,000. It all depends on how desperate the hiring company is.
* LinkShare.com - If you have a site, you can join Linkshare. Once enrolled for free, you can choose companies whose ads are pertinent to your site. Companies have the ultimate say on working with you. Like Commission Junction, there are a ton of companies waiting to evaluate your site.
* Microsoft Adcenter - Bid on keywords and Microsoft places your created ads then they are searched for. This is similar to Google Adwords. You do not need a site for this.
* Overstock.com - Sell your stuff on Overstock.com
* Pageflakes - This is a company that developed a user-defined Ajax homepage to show feeds, flickr photos, and a ton of other things. Think of it as a replacement for your Google Homepage. Anyway - they'll pay you $1 per referral that you send over. They are not part of a wider affiliate program so you do it direct. This one is pretty simple.
* Pay Per Post - I don't agree with this model entirely but they have advertisers that will pay you to write about their products on your blog.
* Pheedo - If you have an RSS feed, run it through Pheedo. Like Feedburner, they can include ads into your feed and if you really become large, advertisers will pay a premium for you to show their ads.
* Shareasale.com - I've never really worked with them but I do have an account. They are similar to Commission Junction and Linkshare however they seem to have lower tiered companies with advertising offers.
* Shoemoney - This is a blog that can teach you a ton on making money online. I've spent hours reading his old stuff.
* Software Judge - They will pay you up to $50 to review software.
* Text Link Ads - I have never made a dime here but I know people that have. You can earn by sending advertisers to them or by selling spots on your site. You must have a real site or blog to do this - nothing on a shared domain (i.e. /blogspot).
* Vibrant Media - Don't bother unless your site has 500,000 page views of text based content a month. If you have that readership, these are the guys that display bubble box ads to underlined words on your site.
* West Work At Home Agent - Not entirely online but this is worth a mention because it's won awards and is very legitimate. If you are an at-home Mom or free-lancer without work, you should check this out.
* Yahoo Publisher Network- This is the Yahoo version of Google Adsense.
Make Money on eBay
How to Sell on eBay Internationally without risk
I have been selling internationally on eBay for years, but it is not a step to be taken lightly. All the bases need to be covered. I will go through some very important do's and don't that can save you time and effort.
eBay allows you the opportunity to sell all over the world. It is exciting to communicate with a customer from England, Australia or Japan via email. It is almost as if you are speaking in person. It also opens a huge market! Many US sellers do not sell internationally so you can receive higher bids and more interest in your product; but you need to follow the guidelines I will explain below to ensure your payment.
There are only two methods of payment, which will ensure absolute zero risk regarding sending product overseas:
1. The first is wire transfer directly to your bank.
You can contact your local bank and they will walk you through a wire transfer transaction. It is very similar to the process of having a payroll check deposited in your account. As soon as a payment is deposited electronically into your account it can never be touched by any source other than by you, the account owner. Once the bank notifies you that payment is wired or transferred into your account, you can ship the product.
2. The second is http://www.auctionpayments.com/, which is a division of Western Union. This was originally called BidPay.com and the name has been changed to Western Union (R) Auction Payments.
Payment for this method is completely processed via email. You will then receive a physical check from Western Union. This usually takes three to four days after your email confirmation. Very Important! Do not ship the product when you receive the email confirmation. Wait until you physically receive the check from Western Union.
I do not accept cashier's checks, even from US customers. There is a common misconception that they are as good as cash. They are not! There have been cases where blank stolen cashier's checks, or even bank checks have been forged.
I also do not accept credit card payments from overseas buyers. They offer no protection from fraud as they do in the US. Even if it states Master Card or Visa, they are not governed by the same rules and laws of the United States.
Shipping product internationally is more work, but the rewards can outweigh the time involved. Unlike shipping products within the US, the first major difference is the "customs form". These forms are free and supplied by the shipping carrier you chose, whether it is the US Postal Service, Fed Ex, UPS, Etc. You will need to state the weight, the item and it's value, the destination, etc.
Important lesson - I learned this the hard way! I have a FED EX account, which allows me to print a label and send an item from my computer without having to go to a shipping company. I receive a discounted rate on my shipping as opposed to taking it to a Mailboxes, etc. or a shipping house. I shipped a computer using my account. I didn't realize I would be charged duty taxes on the item, which was an additional $150.00. Ouch!
Now when shipping internationally I use only the United States Postal Service, and the complete shipping amount is paid to USPS upon delivery. Country duty taxes will be collected from the buyer, not you.
Shipping internationally can be rewarding and interesting! Make sure you only take payment in the methods described above, be aware of the shipping procedures, and send via USPS.com.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Global Warming
Dry/Ice: Global Warming Revealed
by Sulittio Rido
What you are about to read is going to change your world forever, this I can promise you. I actually apologize that I have to be the one who brings this unsettling news, but you must know if you wish to survive, for what is coming will either be DRY and heat or ICE and freezing.
Global warming has been in the news for over 40 years, and by this time we have become complacent. Our scientists have come to the agreement that global warming will eventually cause major changes and problems in the world, but in their way of thinking it will be 50 to 100 years before we will actually have to deal with the effects.
The general idea is that global warming will be slow and the world will find time to discover the solutions to the problems.
New powerful evidence strongly suggests that this scenario is simply wrong, and we had better prepare for another more abrupt possibility.
DISCOVERY MAGAZINE
One of the first hints that something may be different than what we are being told (especially here in the US) was published in Discover magazine in September 2002 with the cover announcing “Global Warming Surprise, A New Ice Age”, “Oceanographers have discovered a huge river of fresh water in the Atlantic formed by melting polar ice. They warn it could soon bury the Gulf Stream, plunging North America and Europe into frigid winters.”
That was almost two years ago, and no one listened. Life goes on oblivious to the incredible danger approaching.
ENGLAND & SIR DAVID KING
Then in January 2004 enter Sir David King. Sir King is the Prime Minister of England’s chief scientist. Sir King went to Mr. Blair and told him of the impending worldwide disaster and that they needed to tell the world of what was about to happen.
Tony Blair told Sir David King to be quiet and not speak. But Sir King felt that this was simply too important for him to say nothing, so in January of this year he deliberately went around Mr. Blair and went straight to the American journal Science where he published his information and concern.
Sir King said in this article, “In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism.”
England placed a gag order on Sir David King, and now he is not even allowed to discuss this subject publicly without threat of detention.
AMERICA & THE PENTAGON
A month later in February 2004, the Pentagon became involved, which has stirred the world to action.
The Pentagon has been studying Global Warming for many years because of its possible national security problems associated with the kind of changes that could present themselves to the world through Global Warming.
A special study was conducted through one of the Pentagon’s departments, the Office of Net Assessment, which is directed by Andrew W. Marshall, 83, who has the responsibility of identifying long-term threats to the United States.
Mr. Marshall went to a US based think-tank called Global Business Network to compile the possibilities of Global Warming on US national security. A study was completed in October of 2003 and released to the Pentagon, which was looking at this problem from the point of view of what is the worst that could happen. It was named “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.” The summary went far beyond what most Pentagon experts had expected.
Realizing the incredible possibilities of this study, Mr. Marshall made a decision to publicly report this and other information to the American people. And probably because of President Bush’s stance on Global Warming, which is beyond negative, he also decided to go around the president, and he published his information and concern in Fortune magazine on February 9th 2004.
In his article in Fortune, Mr. Marshall explains how the melting North and South poles and glaciers from around the world are composed of fresh water and within this fact is the basis of the impending global weather disaster.
The Gulf Stream or scientifically referred to as North Atlantic thermohaline conveyor is a stream of warm water that comes from south of the equator and flows over the surface of the ocean toward the north where this warm water keeps Northern America and Northern and Western Europe from freezing. It also holds most of the world’s weather patterns in the way we are used to.
Then as this Gulf Stream cools down, it drops to the bottom of the ocean and returns as a river in the ocean to the south where it warms up again and rises to the surface and then returns to the north one more time in a continuous convection current. It is a huge three dimensional figure eight.
The motor that keep this warm water flowing is found in the north where the Gulf Stream drops to the bottom of the ocean. It is the salt density of the ocean that causes this river to drop and pulls the warm water up from the south.
Now that the poles are melting and fresh water is flowing into the Atlantic Ocean and the salt density is decreasing, the Gulf Stream does not drop quiet as far, which results in a slowing down of this Stream. The Gulf Stream has been dramatically slowing down now for at least ten years.
As the Gulf Stream slows down, the warmth is not brought to the North Atlantic region, and the weather patterns begin to change for they are dependent on this warmth to keep a balance.
THE MELTING POLES
The Bush Administration
During the Bush administration when discussions have been held on the melting of the North & South Poles, this government and US corporate entities alike have stated that the world’s scientists are all wrong on their conclusions that say there is great danger, and have led the American public to believe there is no real problem at all.
However, George W. Bush was the focus of attack by Sir David King when he wrote his article in Science, for the world’s greatest scientific minds, at least one thousand seven hundred of them with the Union of Concerned Scientists say that Mr. Bush is ill informed at the least.
Since the US government is 25% of the CO2 pollution in the world that is creating Global Warming, a discussion of Mr. Bush’s Global Warming policies is paramount. Perhaps one of the best articles that summaries Mr. Bush’s position will be found in the ROLLING STONES magazine article of May 19, 2004 by Tim Dickinson. What follows in italics is a portion of this article.
Given the imminent threat from global warming, even the Bush administration might be expected to launch a War on Heat. After all, as a candidate in 2000, George W. Bush vowed to "establish mandatory reduction targets" for carbon-dioxide emissions, saying he would make the issue a top priority.
Once Bush became president, however, reducing carbon emissions was the first promise he broke -- and his record has been all downhill from there. Only two months after taking office, the administration withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, the global treaty that the United States signed in 1997 to set strict limits on greenhouse emissions. Instead, Bush instituted a voluntary emissions plan that has been an abject failure: So far, only fourteen companies have pledged to curb their CO2 output.
The president also folded the interagency group that monitors climate change into the Commerce Department -- led by Secretary Don Evans, a former oil and gas executive. And he called for additional climate research that would delay any meaningful regulation for at least another decade. "We do not know how much our climate could or will change in the future," Bush declared in a speech in the Rose Garden. Such statements spurred an open letter signed by twenty Nobel laureates, who blasted the administration for having "consistently sought to undermine" public understanding of man's role in global warming. (Bush's science adviser refused to be interviewed for this article.)
Then the censorship began. In September 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency released an air-quality report that - for the first time since 1996 - included no mention of global warming. Seven months later, the White House made wholesale revisions to the climate-change chapter of the EPA's "Report on the Environment," playing down human influence, deleting references to the health impacts of global warming and inserting climate data funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute. The EPA withdrew the altered chapter, acknowledging in an internal memo that it "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change."
Even some Republicans have been astounded at Bush's meddling in EPA affairs. "What seems constantly evident with George W. Bush is that EPA is expected to take its marching orders from the White House on regulatory matters," says Russell Train, who headed the agency under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. "During my time, I never had that happen. Never." Train, a recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom from the elder Bush, calls the administration's approach to global warming "totally wrong" and "irresponsible."
Bush can rely on key Republicans in Congress to block any efforts to curb pollution and stave off disaster. Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, dismisses global warming as a "hoax." In a speech last July, Inhofe compared the IPCC to the Soviets and extolled the virtues of what he called a "CO2-enhanced" world. "It is my fervent hope," he concluded, "that Congress will reject the prophets of doom who peddle propaganda masquerading as science in the name of saving the planet from catastrophic disaster."
From another point of view in the same article we hear: “They (the Bush Administration) do not have a credible plan, either domestically or internationally, for addressing the problem (Global Warming), says Michael Oppenheimer, a climatologist at Princeton University. They (the Bush Administration) argue that they don’t want to address global warming, he says, ‘because the science is shaky’. And that approach is indefensible, because the science isn’t shaky.”
The North Pole Melting
Let’s look at the facts. Two summers ago the North Pole completely melted for the first time in history that we know of. Both private and military ships floated directly over the actual North Pole as it was completely water. This area has never been seen to be less then ten feet of solid ice.
Greenpeace a few years ago announced that the North Pole’s winter to summer snow pack had receded by around three hundred miles, but no one listened.
And today, as I am writing this article, we are witnessing the Alaska fire that has consumed over one million acres of forest. This fire is burning in an area that is always wet with rain or snow until now. And this fire, as you will understand in this article is directly related to the melting of the poles and the Gulf Stream.
But finally the Pentagon, thanks to Andrew Marshall, has told the truth in the Fortune magazine on February 9th. The Pentagon shows a satellite photo of the North Pole in 1970 and then in 2003, which reveals that, according to the Pentagon, 40% of the North Pole has melted in just 33 years. And it is melting faster and faster now. The Pentagon has now proven that all these government statements that the poles are not melting were simply a lie. And it is a lie more damaging than anything that Bush’s Iraq war could possibly throw at the United States.
The South Pole Melting
In the South Pole a couple of years ago Larsen A ledge broke off, which surprised many scientists. At that time we were told by the scientific personnel that were studying this event that it was no big deal since this ice ledge had only been connected to the South Pole for about the last ten thousand years.
And these same scientists also added that Larsen B ledge that was behind Larsen A ledge would never melt as it has been there for many ice ages. Yet last year, Larsen’s B ledge broke off and went to sea. These same scientists said that it would take six months to melt because of its immense size, but again they were wrong. It melted in a mere 35 days, and more significant, it rose the entire world’s oceans by almost an inch.
Now with Larsen’s B ledge gone, an incredibly enormous ice shelf called Ross’s Shelf is exposed and the only thing holding Ross’s Shelf from sliding into the ocean was Larsen’s B ledge. According to my sources, Ross’s Shelf is now cracking.
If Ross’s Shelf were to slide into the ocean, it has been estimated that it would raise the entire world’s oceans by sixteen to twenty feet. And that, my friends, would change the world, as almost every coastal city in the world and many islands along with the county of Holland would be underwater. Perhaps it will take an event like this to wake up the world to become serious about Global Warming.
THE ANCIENT PAST
1300 AD
The Pentagon in their study of what is now happening in the North Atlantic ocean, has looked into the past to see when this slowing down or stoppage of the Gulf Stream has happened before and what actually took place at those time in the world’s weather patterns.
In actual fact, this North Atlantic ocean slowing or stoppage has happen hundreds of times before in the past going back hundred of millions years, but in our recent past of the last 10,000 years, it has only happened twice.
The most recent time was in the year 1300 AD, and at that time it simply slowed down. It never actually stopped. And why it slowed down, scientists are at the moment theorizing. They don’t really know why.
It resulted in abrupt global climatic weather changes that never returned to normal for 550 years. This period of time in our history has been named the “Little Ice Age” because of the havoc it caused to our weather and the dramatic cooling that resulted.
What the Pentagon has realized is that at that time of the “Little Ice Age”, the East Coast of America became extremely cold, while the middle and Western areas of the United States became so dry that the Midwest became a dust bowl and the mountain forests burned to the ground, just as they are doing right now today, for you see, this slowing down of the Gulf Stream has been going on today for about ten years. It also affected Europe dramatically as their weather changed completely during the “Little Ice Age”.
A study of the Anasazi Indians of the 14th century is enlightening. In Chaco Canyon in New Mexico the Anasazi completely disappeared, and where they went no one is sure. But one of the reasons that has emerged from the study of the New Mexico environment for their leaving the area is that soon after the turn of the 14th century, Chaco Canyon went into a drought where they didn’t receive a drop of rain for 47 years! 47 years of drought will definitely cause anyone to move. No water, no life.
The archeologists who presented this study didn’t know why the drought happened, but it is clear why it happened with the information of the Gulf Stream slowing down just before this period. And this is exactly what the Pentagon believes is about to happen here in America, Canada and Europe as we speak.
We may think that this current drought in the US West is going to stop soon, but the earth’s history with the Gulf Stream suggests strongly that it will continue for about another 40 years before it begin to regain balance.
8200 Years Ago
However, the Pentagon report believes that the Gulf Stream, from everything they know, is not just going to slow down, but rather it is going to stop. And the last time this happened was 8200 years ago.
And according to the Pentagon, from their research, this is a much more dramatic scenario. When the Gulf Stream stopped 8200 years ago, it soon left Northern Europe under a half mile of ice, and New York and England quickly endured weather similar to Siberia.
Further it resulted in a true “Ice Age” that lasted about 100 years, and so you can see why the Pentagon is so worried. According to Andrew Marshall, like Sir David King, he says that this Gulf Stream problem is a greater threat to US national security (and other countries’) than all of the world’s combined terrorism. Really, when you think about it, terrorism is nothing compared to the stopping of the Gulf Stream. It’s not even close.
Realize that without stable weather conditions, the growing of food becomes almost impossible, and according to the Pentagon, this could become such a huge problem for the world in the near future, that wars will begin to form all over the world, not for oil or energy, but for food and water.
And with whole countries having to evacuate, if this were to happen, such as Finland, Sweden and Denmark, which will be under ice, and many other countries for other reasons, this enormous immigration is what will cause the most threat to national security, again according to the Pentagon report.
This is why Andrew Marshall and Sir David King wanted the world to know about what was coming so that the world could begin to prepare for the inevitable.
THE US SENATE
Then in March 2004 the US Senate became aware of what the Pentagon was saying and they appropriated 60 million dollars to the study of ABRUPT GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGES. This offers hope that soon the US Senate will begin to tell the world of these coming climate changes.
THE UNITED NATIONS
In June 2004, ending on June 29th, a meeting was held at the United Nations to consider what to do about Global Warming and the Gulf Stream. 154 countries participated with the result that the only thing they could figure out what to do was to eliminate the use of oil and gasoline as soon as possible.
There are those who believe that if we continue to lower the CO2 levels, that possibly we can slow down the problems, and, of course, we must do everything we can. This is important for there are ocean currents other that the North Atlantic that are in every ocean, and if they all were to stop or slow down, Earth would all most certainly enter a true ice age. And history has shown that if that were to happen, our civilization would not return to a warm period again for 90,000 years.
But really, to change or increase the current of the entire Atlantic ocean to bring it back to “normal” is beyond the possibilities of the human race and all of it’s technologies. It is too late, by the estimate of most of the world’s scientists, to alter the course of what is about to happen. All we can do now is prepare for the shock. And preparation is essential, which is the main message of both Sir David King and Andrew Marshall.
NASA PREPARES
On July 13th, 2004, NASA launched a satellite, the first of three, that’s whole purpose is to study Global Warming. Besides the study of the ozone, another huge problem associated with Global Warming, these satellites will monitor the temperature and salt density of the oceans. Perhaps we will at least be able to monitor the rapid changes and predict what will happen next.
SOME UNUSUAL WEATHER CHANGES THAT HAVE HAPPENED
SINCE THE GULF STREAM SLOWED DOWN
In March 2004 the world saw a major hurricane hit the coast of Brazil. This is the first time in all recorded history that a hurricane has struck land in South America.
In May 2004, the United States witnessed 562 tornadoes in a single month, breaking all records. A few of these tornadoes were recorded in Seattle, Washington. Never has a tornado been seen in Seattle.
Eastern Canada in the winter of 2003/2004 just had one of the coldest winters on record.
For several years forest fires have been burning around the world. The list would be extensive. The north part of Australia is on fire. Alaska, as we have already mentioned, is burning. Unprecedented!
The entire Western United States is under fire, jumping from region to region, with the US government announcing that this is the worse drought in 500 years. Really, the fires are worldwide.
France and Europe had a heat wave in 2003 that caused 15,000 people to die in France and 30,000 through-out Europe simply from the intense heat caused by Global Warming and the Gulf Stream.
Argentina this month July 2004, had the greatest storm they have ever seen in their history.
Mexico’s weather is so strange and wet in some regions that mold/fungus is forming on their crops. (And in other regions they are having a drought) As weather patterns begin to change more and more radically, food growth will become one of our biggest problems.
The coral reefs of the world are dying because of Global Warming, and this is threatening most of the islands in the oceans, including those in the Pacific. Anyone living on most islands will probably have to leave sooner or later because of their fresh water being corrupted with salt ocean water. Definitely they will have to leave if the oceans rise much higher.
Further, it was reported on NPR this morning, July 16, 2004, that fifty percent of the CO2 that has been released in the atmosphere from our technological society has ended up in our oceans and this in turn is dropping the PH to the acidic. This in turn is actually dissolving the coral reefs and killing them along with vast numbers of other life forms in the oceans.
These are problems simply off the top of my head. If one were to get serious and really research all the strange weather problems of the last ten years (the years the Gulf Stream slowed down) one would begin to be truly aware of the coming abrupt global climate weather changes that we must all adapt to if humanity is to continue on Earth.
THE 40-FOOT WALL
In the Pentagon report it suggests that the United States build a 40-foot wall around the entire country to keep out people who are immigrating and trying to escape world weather problems. The Pentagon believes that food and water will be the biggest problem, and since the US has the money to buy food, they believe we will be best able to resist this particular problem longer than most countries. People will want to come here just to get food.
This sounds like something out of a weird movie, but in fact the US government has already begun the construction of this wall between the US and Mexico.
SIDE NOTE: Speaking of movies, The Day After Tomorrow, which was recently released is based on this information of the Gulf Stream stopping. However, Hollywood exaggerated the results of the storms so much that most people simply thought it was fantasy. It is not fantasy, it is really happening, but will it happen as this movie predicts? And in this movie you saw massive amount of Americans fleeing to Mexico to escape the extreme cold weather.
I just spoke with a US military person about two weeks ago who is involved in the construction of this 40-foot wall. In the discussion, with him about the Gulf Stream, which he was unaware of, he said, “Oh, now I understand. You see, the wall is straight up and down on the Mexican side, but it has steps and ladders on the US side to get over the wall and into Mexico. I never could understand why the government was doing this.”
THE CHANGING OF THE SHAPE OF THE GULF STREAM
In the Pentagon report they said that they believed that the stoppage of the Gulf Stream would probably happen in three to five years from October 2003. This was their best guess, and admittedly it was only a guess and a theory.
But what they didn’t know, because it was beginning at the actual time of their release of their report, was that the Gulf Stream was beginning to change shape. The change of shape of the Gulf Stream is the beginning of the breakdown and stoppage of this warm water current and the end of our civilization as we know it.
I have this information from two sources, both of which do not wish to be named right now, but both of them are world famous scientists.
If this is true, then all the effects and timing of the Pentagon report have to be shifted closer to the present by three to five years.
I don’t know if this is true, but in the vein of holding nothing back, this info is placed in this article. The actual proof will follow if it will be given to me.
FROM MY HEART TO YOURS
As I became aware of this information, I didn’t know what to do or if I should write this article. But because I believe in and love humanity, I finally realized, like Sir David King and Andrew Marshall, that I must speak out, for knowledge is power.
And when the time comes for us all to make life decisions, my prayer is that we all go inside where God resides and listen to our inner Heart. If we trust in ourselves and the presence of Divine Guidance, we will all know exactly what to do and where to be.
May God bless us all in what is about to come.
Dry/Ice: Global Warming Revealed
Updates, Corrections and Clarification
by Sulittio Rido
What you are about to read is going to change your world forever, this I can promise you. I actually apologize that I have to be the one who brings this unsettling news, but you must know if you wish to survive, for what is coming will either be DRY and heat or ICE and freezing.
Global warming has been in the news for over 40 years, and by this time we have become complacent. Our scientists have come to the agreement that global warming will eventually cause major changes and problems in the world, but in their way of thinking it will be 50 to 100 years before we will actually have to deal with the effects.
The general idea is that global warming will be slow and the world will find time to discover the solutions to the problems.
New powerful evidence strongly suggests that this scenario is simply wrong, and we had better prepare for another more abrupt possibility.
DISCOVERY MAGAZINE
One of the first hints that something may be different than what we are being told (especially here in the US) was published in Discover magazine in September 2002 with the cover announcing “Global Warming Surprise, A New Ice Age”, “Oceanographers have discovered a huge river of fresh water in the Atlantic formed by melting polar ice. They warn it could soon bury the Gulf Stream, plunging North America and Europe into frigid winters.”
That was almost two years ago, and no one listened. Life goes on oblivious to the incredible danger approaching.
ENGLAND & SIR DAVID KING
Then in January 2004 enter Sir David King. Sir King is the Prime Minister of England’s chief scientist. Sir King went to Mr. Blair and told him of the impending worldwide disaster and that they needed to tell the world of what was about to happen.
Tony Blair told Sir David King to be quiet and not speak. But Sir King felt that this was simply too important for him to say nothing, so in January of this year he deliberately went around Mr. Blair and went straight to the American journal Science where he published his information and concern.
Sir King said in this article, “In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today, more serious even than the threat of terrorism.”
England placed a gag order on Sir David King, and now he is not even allowed to discuss this subject publicly without threat of detention.
AMERICA & THE PENTAGON
A month later in February 2004, the Pentagon became involved, which has stirred the world to action.
The Pentagon has been studying Global Warming for many years because of its possible national security problems associated with the kind of changes that could present themselves to the world through Global Warming.
A special study was conducted through one of the Pentagon’s departments, the Office of Net Assessment, which is directed by Andrew W. Marshall, 83, who has the responsibility of identifying long-term threats to the United States.
Mr. Marshall went to a US based think-tank called Global Business Network to compile the possibilities of Global Warming on US national security. A study was completed in October of 2003 and released to the Pentagon, which was looking at this problem from the point of view of what is the worst that could happen. It was named “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security.” The summary went far beyond what most Pentagon experts had expected.
Realizing the incredible possibilities of this study, Mr. Marshall made a decision to publicly report this and other information to the American people. And probably because of President Bush’s stance on Global Warming, which is beyond negative, he also decided to go around the president, and he published his information and concern in Fortune magazine on February 9th 2004.
In his article in Fortune, Mr. Marshall explains how the melting North and South poles and glaciers from around the world are composed of fresh water and within this fact is the basis of the impending global weather disaster.
The Gulf Stream or scientifically referred to as North Atlantic thermohaline conveyor is a stream of warm water that comes from south of the equator and flows over the surface of the ocean toward the north where this warm water keeps Northern America and Northern and Western Europe from freezing. It also holds most of the world’s weather patterns in the way we are used to.
Then as this Gulf Stream cools down, it drops to the bottom of the ocean and returns as a river in the ocean to the south where it warms up again and rises to the surface and then returns to the north one more time in a continuous convection current. It is a huge three dimensional figure eight.
The motor that keep this warm water flowing is found in the north where the Gulf Stream drops to the bottom of the ocean. It is the salt density of the ocean that causes this river to drop and pulls the warm water up from the south.
Now that the poles are melting and fresh water is flowing into the Atlantic Ocean and the salt density is decreasing, the Gulf Stream does not drop quiet as far, which results in a slowing down of this Stream. The Gulf Stream has been dramatically slowing down now for at least ten years.
As the Gulf Stream slows down, the warmth is not brought to the North Atlantic region, and the weather patterns begin to change for they are dependent on this warmth to keep a balance.
THE MELTING POLES
The Bush Administration
During the Bush administration when discussions have been held on the melting of the North & South Poles, this government and US corporate entities alike have stated that the world’s scientists are all wrong on their conclusions that say there is great danger, and have led the American public to believe there is no real problem at all.
However, George W. Bush was the focus of attack by Sir David King when he wrote his article in Science, for the world’s greatest scientific minds, at least one thousand seven hundred of them with the Union of Concerned Scientists say that Mr. Bush is ill informed at the least.
Since the US government is 25% of the CO2 pollution in the world that is creating Global Warming, a discussion of Mr. Bush’s Global Warming policies is paramount. Perhaps one of the best articles that summaries Mr. Bush’s position will be found in the ROLLING STONES magazine article of May 19, 2004 by Tim Dickinson. What follows in italics is a portion of this article.
Given the imminent threat from global warming, even the Bush administration might be expected to launch a War on Heat. After all, as a candidate in 2000, George W. Bush vowed to "establish mandatory reduction targets" for carbon-dioxide emissions, saying he would make the issue a top priority.
Once Bush became president, however, reducing carbon emissions was the first promise he broke -- and his record has been all downhill from there. Only two months after taking office, the administration withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, the global treaty that the United States signed in 1997 to set strict limits on greenhouse emissions. Instead, Bush instituted a voluntary emissions plan that has been an abject failure: So far, only fourteen companies have pledged to curb their CO2 output.
The president also folded the interagency group that monitors climate change into the Commerce Department -- led by Secretary Don Evans, a former oil and gas executive. And he called for additional climate research that would delay any meaningful regulation for at least another decade. "We do not know how much our climate could or will change in the future," Bush declared in a speech in the Rose Garden. Such statements spurred an open letter signed by twenty Nobel laureates, who blasted the administration for having "consistently sought to undermine" public understanding of man's role in global warming. (Bush's science adviser refused to be interviewed for this article.)
Then the censorship began. In September 2002, the Environmental Protection Agency released an air-quality report that - for the first time since 1996 - included no mention of global warming. Seven months later, the White House made wholesale revisions to the climate-change chapter of the EPA's "Report on the Environment," playing down human influence, deleting references to the health impacts of global warming and inserting climate data funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute. The EPA withdrew the altered chapter, acknowledging in an internal memo that it "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change."
Even some Republicans have been astounded at Bush's meddling in EPA affairs. "What seems constantly evident with George W. Bush is that EPA is expected to take its marching orders from the White House on regulatory matters," says Russell Train, who headed the agency under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. "During my time, I never had that happen. Never." Train, a recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom from the elder Bush, calls the administration's approach to global warming "totally wrong" and "irresponsible."
Bush can rely on key Republicans in Congress to block any efforts to curb pollution and stave off disaster. Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, dismisses global warming as a "hoax." In a speech last July, Inhofe compared the IPCC to the Soviets and extolled the virtues of what he called a "CO2-enhanced" world. "It is my fervent hope," he concluded, "that Congress will reject the prophets of doom who peddle propaganda masquerading as science in the name of saving the planet from catastrophic disaster."
From another point of view in the same article we hear: “They (the Bush Administration) do not have a credible plan, either domestically or internationally, for addressing the problem (Global Warming), says Michael Oppenheimer, a climatologist at Princeton University. They (the Bush Administration) argue that they don’t want to address global warming, he says, ‘because the science is shaky’. And that approach is indefensible, because the science isn’t shaky.”
The North Pole Melting
Let’s look at the facts. Two summers ago the North Pole completely melted for the first time in history that we know of. Both private and military ships floated directly over the actual North Pole as it was completely water. This area has never been seen to be less then ten feet of solid ice.
Greenpeace a few years ago announced that the North Pole’s winter to summer snow pack had receded by around three hundred miles, but no one listened.
And today, as I am writing this article, we are witnessing the Alaska fire that has consumed over one million acres of forest. This fire is burning in an area that is always wet with rain or snow until now. And this fire, as you will understand in this article is directly related to the melting of the poles and the Gulf Stream.
But finally the Pentagon, thanks to Andrew Marshall, has told the truth in the Fortune magazine on February 9th. The Pentagon shows a satellite photo of the North Pole in 1970 and then in 2003, which reveals that, according to the Pentagon, 40% of the North Pole has melted in just 33 years. And it is melting faster and faster now. The Pentagon has now proven that all these government statements that the poles are not melting were simply a lie. And it is a lie more damaging than anything that Bush’s Iraq war could possibly throw at the United States.
The South Pole Melting
In the South Pole a couple of years ago Larsen A ledge broke off, which surprised many scientists. At that time we were told by the scientific personnel that were studying this event that it was no big deal since this ice ledge had only been connected to the South Pole for about the last ten thousand years.
And these same scientists also added that Larsen B ledge that was behind Larsen A ledge would never melt as it has been there for many ice ages. Yet last year, Larsen’s B ledge broke off and went to sea. These same scientists said that it would take six months to melt because of its immense size, but again they were wrong. It melted in a mere 35 days, and more significant, it rose the entire world’s oceans by almost an inch.
Now with Larsen’s B ledge gone, an incredibly enormous ice shelf called Ross’s Shelf is exposed and the only thing holding Ross’s Shelf from sliding into the ocean was Larsen’s B ledge. According to my sources, Ross’s Shelf is now cracking.
If Ross’s Shelf were to slide into the ocean, it has been estimated that it would raise the entire world’s oceans by sixteen to twenty feet. And that, my friends, would change the world, as almost every coastal city in the world and many islands along with the county of Holland would be underwater. Perhaps it will take an event like this to wake up the world to become serious about Global Warming.
THE ANCIENT PAST
1300 AD
The Pentagon in their study of what is now happening in the North Atlantic ocean, has looked into the past to see when this slowing down or stoppage of the Gulf Stream has happened before and what actually took place at those time in the world’s weather patterns.
In actual fact, this North Atlantic ocean slowing or stoppage has happen hundreds of times before in the past going back hundred of millions years, but in our recent past of the last 10,000 years, it has only happened twice.
The most recent time was in the year 1300 AD, and at that time it simply slowed down. It never actually stopped. And why it slowed down, scientists are at the moment theorizing. They don’t really know why.
It resulted in abrupt global climatic weather changes that never returned to normal for 550 years. This period of time in our history has been named the “Little Ice Age” because of the havoc it caused to our weather and the dramatic cooling that resulted.
What the Pentagon has realized is that at that time of the “Little Ice Age”, the East Coast of America became extremely cold, while the middle and Western areas of the United States became so dry that the Midwest became a dust bowl and the mountain forests burned to the ground, just as they are doing right now today, for you see, this slowing down of the Gulf Stream has been going on today for about ten years. It also affected Europe dramatically as their weather changed completely during the “Little Ice Age”.
A study of the Anasazi Indians of the 14th century is enlightening. In Chaco Canyon in New Mexico the Anasazi completely disappeared, and where they went no one is sure. But one of the reasons that has emerged from the study of the New Mexico environment for their leaving the area is that soon after the turn of the 14th century, Chaco Canyon went into a drought where they didn’t receive a drop of rain for 47 years! 47 years of drought will definitely cause anyone to move. No water, no life.
The archeologists who presented this study didn’t know why the drought happened, but it is clear why it happened with the information of the Gulf Stream slowing down just before this period. And this is exactly what the Pentagon believes is about to happen here in America, Canada and Europe as we speak.
We may think that this current drought in the US West is going to stop soon, but the earth’s history with the Gulf Stream suggests strongly that it will continue for about another 40 years before it begin to regain balance.
8200 Years Ago
However, the Pentagon report believes that the Gulf Stream, from everything they know, is not just going to slow down, but rather it is going to stop. And the last time this happened was 8200 years ago.
And according to the Pentagon, from their research, this is a much more dramatic scenario. When the Gulf Stream stopped 8200 years ago, it soon left Northern Europe under a half mile of ice, and New York and England quickly endured weather similar to Siberia.
Further it resulted in a true “Ice Age” that lasted about 100 years, and so you can see why the Pentagon is so worried. According to Andrew Marshall, like Sir David King, he says that this Gulf Stream problem is a greater threat to US national security (and other countries’) than all of the world’s combined terrorism. Really, when you think about it, terrorism is nothing compared to the stopping of the Gulf Stream. It’s not even close.
Realize that without stable weather conditions, the growing of food becomes almost impossible, and according to the Pentagon, this could become such a huge problem for the world in the near future, that wars will begin to form all over the world, not for oil or energy, but for food and water.
And with whole countries having to evacuate, if this were to happen, such as Finland, Sweden and Denmark, which will be under ice, and many other countries for other reasons, this enormous immigration is what will cause the most threat to national security, again according to the Pentagon report.
This is why Andrew Marshall and Sir David King wanted the world to know about what was coming so that the world could begin to prepare for the inevitable.
THE US SENATE
Then in March 2004 the US Senate became aware of what the Pentagon was saying and they appropriated 60 million dollars to the study of ABRUPT GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGES. This offers hope that soon the US Senate will begin to tell the world of these coming climate changes.
THE UNITED NATIONS
In June 2004, ending on June 29th, a meeting was held at the United Nations to consider what to do about Global Warming and the Gulf Stream. 154 countries participated with the result that the only thing they could figure out what to do was to eliminate the use of oil and gasoline as soon as possible.
There are those who believe that if we continue to lower the CO2 levels, that possibly we can slow down the problems, and, of course, we must do everything we can. This is important for there are ocean currents other that the North Atlantic that are in every ocean, and if they all were to stop or slow down, Earth would all most certainly enter a true ice age. And history has shown that if that were to happen, our civilization would not return to a warm period again for 90,000 years.
But really, to change or increase the current of the entire Atlantic ocean to bring it back to “normal” is beyond the possibilities of the human race and all of it’s technologies. It is too late, by the estimate of most of the world’s scientists, to alter the course of what is about to happen. All we can do now is prepare for the shock. And preparation is essential, which is the main message of both Sir David King and Andrew Marshall.
NASA PREPARES
On July 13th, 2004, NASA launched a satellite, the first of three, that’s whole purpose is to study Global Warming. Besides the study of the ozone, another huge problem associated with Global Warming, these satellites will monitor the temperature and salt density of the oceans. Perhaps we will at least be able to monitor the rapid changes and predict what will happen next.
SOME UNUSUAL WEATHER CHANGES THAT HAVE HAPPENED
SINCE THE GULF STREAM SLOWED DOWN
In March 2004 the world saw a major hurricane hit the coast of Brazil. This is the first time in all recorded history that a hurricane has struck land in South America.
In May 2004, the United States witnessed 562 tornadoes in a single month, breaking all records. A few of these tornadoes were recorded in Seattle, Washington. Never has a tornado been seen in Seattle.
Eastern Canada in the winter of 2003/2004 just had one of the coldest winters on record.
For several years forest fires have been burning around the world. The list would be extensive. The north part of Australia is on fire. Alaska, as we have already mentioned, is burning. Unprecedented!
The entire Western United States is under fire, jumping from region to region, with the US government announcing that this is the worse drought in 500 years. Really, the fires are worldwide.
France and Europe had a heat wave in 2003 that caused 15,000 people to die in France and 30,000 through-out Europe simply from the intense heat caused by Global Warming and the Gulf Stream.
Argentina this month July 2004, had the greatest storm they have ever seen in their history.
Mexico’s weather is so strange and wet in some regions that mold/fungus is forming on their crops. (And in other regions they are having a drought) As weather patterns begin to change more and more radically, food growth will become one of our biggest problems.
The coral reefs of the world are dying because of Global Warming, and this is threatening most of the islands in the oceans, including those in the Pacific. Anyone living on most islands will probably have to leave sooner or later because of their fresh water being corrupted with salt ocean water. Definitely they will have to leave if the oceans rise much higher.
Further, it was reported on NPR this morning, July 16, 2004, that fifty percent of the CO2 that has been released in the atmosphere from our technological society has ended up in our oceans and this in turn is dropping the PH to the acidic. This in turn is actually dissolving the coral reefs and killing them along with vast numbers of other life forms in the oceans.
These are problems simply off the top of my head. If one were to get serious and really research all the strange weather problems of the last ten years (the years the Gulf Stream slowed down) one would begin to be truly aware of the coming abrupt global climate weather changes that we must all adapt to if humanity is to continue on Earth.
THE 40-FOOT WALL
In the Pentagon report it suggests that the United States build a 40-foot wall around the entire country to keep out people who are immigrating and trying to escape world weather problems. The Pentagon believes that food and water will be the biggest problem, and since the US has the money to buy food, they believe we will be best able to resist this particular problem longer than most countries. People will want to come here just to get food.
This sounds like something out of a weird movie, but in fact the US government has already begun the construction of this wall between the US and Mexico.
SIDE NOTE: Speaking of movies, The Day After Tomorrow, which was recently released is based on this information of the Gulf Stream stopping. However, Hollywood exaggerated the results of the storms so much that most people simply thought it was fantasy. It is not fantasy, it is really happening, but will it happen as this movie predicts? And in this movie you saw massive amount of Americans fleeing to Mexico to escape the extreme cold weather.
I just spoke with a US military person about two weeks ago who is involved in the construction of this 40-foot wall. In the discussion, with him about the Gulf Stream, which he was unaware of, he said, “Oh, now I understand. You see, the wall is straight up and down on the Mexican side, but it has steps and ladders on the US side to get over the wall and into Mexico. I never could understand why the government was doing this.”
THE CHANGING OF THE SHAPE OF THE GULF STREAM
In the Pentagon report they said that they believed that the stoppage of the Gulf Stream would probably happen in three to five years from October 2003. This was their best guess, and admittedly it was only a guess and a theory.
But what they didn’t know, because it was beginning at the actual time of their release of their report, was that the Gulf Stream was beginning to change shape. The change of shape of the Gulf Stream is the beginning of the breakdown and stoppage of this warm water current and the end of our civilization as we know it.
I have this information from two sources, both of which do not wish to be named right now, but both of them are world famous scientists.
If this is true, then all the effects and timing of the Pentagon report have to be shifted closer to the present by three to five years.
I don’t know if this is true, but in the vein of holding nothing back, this info is placed in this article. The actual proof will follow if it will be given to me.
FROM MY HEART TO YOURS
As I became aware of this information, I didn’t know what to do or if I should write this article. But because I believe in and love humanity, I finally realized, like Sir David King and Andrew Marshall, that I must speak out, for knowledge is power.
And when the time comes for us all to make life decisions, my prayer is that we all go inside where God resides and listen to our inner Heart. If we trust in ourselves and the presence of Divine Guidance, we will all know exactly what to do and where to be.
May God bless us all in what is about to come.
Dry/Ice: Global Warming Revealed
Updates, Corrections and Clarification
Hacker
A Hacker is a general term in computing that refers to a computer programmer who takes advantage of the faults in the design of computer software or hardware (commonly referred to as "weaknesses") in order to:
gain further knowledge about the internal workings of the software or hardware,
gain access to some previously locked or hidden function of the software or hardware,
disable some previously functioning part of the software or hardware so that it no longer works in the way it was originally intended, or
command the software or hardware to perform an additional task that it was not originally designed to do.
As a hacker's activities commonly (but not always) involve reverse engineering[Note 8] or direct modification of the software or hardware without the manufacturer's knowledge or authorisation, hacking often violates existing Copyright and Patent laws[1] in many countries. A hacker's activities also frequently include the exploitation of a weakness in software or hardware to, for example, command the software or hardware to perform a malicious action against an individual or organisation. While reverse engineering software or hardware to gain further knowledge about its internal may not be considered a crime, malicious acts arising from the exploitation of any weaknesses found are considered crimes and are even considered as terrorist acts in some countries[2]. For these reasons, hacking, the activity of a hacker, is considered a crime under law in most countries, especially under United States Law. Numerous hackers have been, and continue to be, prosecuted[3][4] for their actions, some even becoming infamous through the reporting of their activities in the media.
The word Hacker is a general term within the field of computing and there are more specific terms in use, particularly just within the United States, to describe the different types of hackers and the different kinds of software and hardware that they find weaknesses in. These different types of hackers are listed briefly in Section 6 of this arcticle, however, to read in detail about these different kinds of hackers, please consult Hacker (disambiguation) or Hacking.
Contents :
1 Overview
2 Dawn of the hacker
3 First hardware hackers
4 Emergence of software hackers
5 Difficulties in prosecuting hackers
6 Evolution of the hacker
7 Tools of the hacker
8 Influence of hackers on everyday society
9 References
10 Notes
11 External links
Overview
The hacker of the late 1950s to the early 1970s was originally known for applying expertise and skill to getting the maximum benefit out of hardware and software. These hackers were computer enthusiasts who were highly respected and their skills helped the software and hardware industries to advance very quickly in the early days of computing. However, hackers in general quickly became associated with crime as some of them applied their considerable expertise to illegal activities such as:
the theft of assets (e.g. money[5] or information[6])
the use of services (e.g. telephones) without paying, and
performing malicious deeds against, or causing material damage to, corporations and government institutions (e.g. espionage[7][Note 3]).
Within the Computer User clubs and IT-related Universities in the United States of America, there is currently a debate about the usage of the word hacker within US Academia and there is a proposal that it should only be associated with its original expertise-oriented meaning. To read in detail about this debate, and the issues involved, please see the article Hacker Definition Controversy.
Dawn of the hacker
As early as the mid 1940s, the American Government was sponsoring projects to build huge mainframe computers to forward research into processors and possible applications of those processors. One such project was a US Navy contract initiated during World War II for a flight simulator computer. The computer took so long to design that, by the time the designs were completed, the war was over and the US Navy had lost interest in the project[8]. However, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, took over the designs and built just the computer. The result was the MIT Whirlwind computer. The MIT Whirwind computer is said to have been the first ever computer to have a full-screen graphical display and it was this feature that led programmers of the huge mainframe (four floors of a two-storey building) to exercise their skills and stretch the capabilities of the computer to perform tasks that it was not originally designed to do. One such programmer, George Yale Cherlin, Ph.D, became famous amongst the Whirlwind project's 175 staff when he and some colleagues together managed to use the military-designed mainframe to create a graphical, real-time, simulation of the physics of a bouncing rubber ball[8]. Cherlin's expertise in programming at that time can certainly be considered one of the earliest acts of hacking in the original good sense of the word.
First hardware hackers
While US universities, like MITs Artifical Intelligence Laboratory, continued to push the boundaries of processors and the software running on those processors, industrial applications of the new technology were also being pushed. However, while software was advancing at a very fast pace, the first recorded hacking attempts were on simpler electronic machines that were designed to perform only a single task. Among the first such machines were the part electronic/part mechanical US telephone exchanges and it was in the late 1950s that a young boy called Joe Engressia[Note 4] first managed to hack one of these exchanges.[9]
Engressia was born in 1949 and was blind from birth[10]. As a result of this, however, he was endowed with other amazing talents, one of which was Perfect Pitch. Perfect Pitch is the ability to be able to repeatedly, and exactly, generate a tone of any frequency through singing or whistling. He discovered by accident at the age of just eight years old that the US long-distance[Note 1] telephone exchanges responded to a special "line-idle tone", a 2600Hz frequency tone internal to exchanges that indicated a long-distance line was available for use[10]. The tone was important as it was used by the exchanges to detect when calls had finished, and therefore was used to calculate telephone bills. If a freephone[Note 5] number was dialled, the local exchange would search for an available long-distance line and mark the call as free. Once the long-distance line had been found, generating the 2600Hz idle tone would make the long-distance exchange think the line was idle and it would stop billing the call. However, the local exchange was still connected and any number dialled would then not be billed. Every time Engressia wanted to make a free long-distance call, he would simply whistle into the telephone receiver and receive his free call.
Soon after, in the early 1970s, another man called John Draper discovered the same tone was generated by a toy whistle that came free with boxes of breakfast cereal[11]. Draper blew the whistle into a telephone receiver and also received free calls. Draper become somewhat infamous for envanglesing the technology to be able to cheat the telephone companies without actually using the technology himself. He even gave hacking classes and workshops to his fellow inmates whilst in jail and gave practical demonstrations of his hacking techniques using prison telephones[11].
Both Engressia and Draper were arrested and convicted (Draper on multiple occasions) for their hacking of US telephone exchanges and even became infamous in the local newspapers of the time. Engressia died on August 8th, 2007[9][Note 4], however, both Engressia's and Draper's activities inspired a whole division of hacking focussed on telephone systems that would later be called Phreaking.
Emergence of software hackers
During the 1960s and 1970s, computers were too expensive to buy for the majority of normal people. However, this all changed in the late 1970s and the 1980s with the worldwide home computer revolution. Corporations and individuals alike rushed to create machines for hobbyists to use and experiment with in their own homes and many brands like Apple, Commodore, and Tandy/Radio Shack were born. Many hobbyists rushed out to buy a computer and one such person was a young boy called Kevin Mitnick.
Long before he used a computer, Mitnick had already been involved in hacking when in 1976, at the age of just 13, he managed to hack the bus ticket system in his hometown of Los Angeles, USA to get free bus rides[12]. The system relied on tickets with punched holes in them and Mitnick, using his own specially-made hole punch, was able to cheat ticket machines and travel to any destination he wanted within the Los Angeles area free of charge. By 1982, at the age of 19, he was proficient enough with a computer to be able to hack into the US Government's North American Aerospace Defense Command system (NORAD), a military surveillance system[12]. Although no damage was done and no criminal charges were brought, it is this incident that is widely believed to have been the inspiration for the 1983 film WarGames, a story about a young boy who hacks into a government computer and accidentally starts a launch countdown for some nuclear missiles. In 1988, however, Mitnick went one step further and hacked into the computers of an IT company and illegally downloaded $1m of the computer company's software[13]. The case, brought to court by the computer manufacturer Digital Equipment Corporation, was sucessfully prosecuted and Mitnick received one year in prison in 1989 for his crime.
Mitnick has been jailed on multiple occasions[12] and his reputation as a hacker, plus the rumour that the 1983 film WarGames was based on Mitnick's own experiences, has turned him into a cult figure. Mitnick, having served his sentences, now provides his skill and expertise as a security consultant for is own legitimate internet security firm. However, Mitnick has found himself, ironically, the victim of several successful hacking attempts[14], bringing much embarassment to the person they once used to call "the most wanted computer hacker in the world"[12].
Difficulties in prosecuting hackers
The 1980s and the 1990s saw a revolutionisation in the computer industry that resulted in computers filling every office and touching every aspect of our lives. Whilst technology has continued to advance to bring the world faster and cheaper computers that are in everything from car engines to mobile phones, and the software security to protect those computers has also been advancing, the hackers have also been evolving their techniques to break the new, stronger security.
In August 2007, a 17-year old teenager named George Hotz hacked a mobile phone so that the software restricting its use to a single mobile phone network was disabled, enabling the phone to be used on any rival mobile phone network[15]. Apple Inc.'s iPhone mobile phone handset was announced in an exclusive partnership will US mobile network provider AT&T Wireless[Note 6] in January 2007[16]. Although software in the handset made sure that the iPhone could only operate on AT&T Wireless's network, the phone presented a challenge to hackers who wanted to use the phone on other providers' networks. Hotz was the first person to hack the phone using a combination of software and hardware modifications and he demonstrated his modified iPhone handset working on AT&T Wireless's rival T-Mobile's network.
Whilst Hotz was congratulated by hacking communities everywhere, Apple and AT&T Wireless were not happy, although Hotz appears to have been spared going to court when he stated in interviews that he didn't want to sell his hack[15]. Instead, he was consulted by Apple as to the nature of the hack and Apple soon released an update to the phone's software that was claimed not to include the weaknesses that Hotz had managed to exploit. However, companies and other hacking firms that did try and sell Hotz's hack were approached by Apple's lawyers who successfully blocked the firms from selling the hack citing copyright infringment and reverse engineering[17], something that is considered illegal through such legislation as the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act [18].
Hotz's actions highlighted the difficulties that software and hardware companies face when trying to prevent hackers from reverse engineering their work. While corporations struggle to protect their inventions and business strategies, hackers everywhere are struggling equally hard to try and reverse engineer those inventions for their own profit or gain. One of the reasons why Hotz wasn't brought to trial was because of sections of the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act[18] that appear to permit software or hardware to be reverse engineered and modified without the original manufacturer's consent, where the modification allows the product to interoperate with other programs[19] in the manner for which it was originally intended[Note 2][20]. This was important, as Apple's iPhone was originally designed to be used on every provider's network in the world although this design was limited to AT&T's network using special security software. Thus, as Hotz's modifications to the iPhone did not change the iPhone's original purpose, and the modifications allowed the phone to interoperate with another provider's network, both Apple and AT&T found it difficult to prosecute the teenager, a situation that neither corporation was happy about.
Increasingly, hackers are avoiding prosecution by being hired by corporations to deliberately find the weaknesses in their software or hardware as this is often cheaper than having their system breached and losing the confidence of customers[21]. Hotz is one such person who, by agreeing to co-operate with Apple in explaining the nature of his hack, caused both Hotz and Apple to benefit from what was initially a very serious situation.
Evolution of the hacker
As the software industry has evolved over time, it has become an industry with many different areas of expertise. Along with the expansion of the industry has come an expansion in the number of specific terms in use, particularly just within the United States, to describe the different types of hackers and the different kinds of software and hardware that they focus on.
The different types of hacker that exist today are listed in the table below.Hacker Type Explanation
Black Hat A Black Hat hacker concentrates on finding, and exploiting, the weaknesses in systems in order to perform malicious acts or to cause some kind of injury. All activities of the Black Hat hackers are considered crimes and so, where possible, prosecutions have, and continue to be, brought against this kind of hacker.
Computer Security A Computer Security Hacker is someone who specializes in work with the security mechanisms for computer and network systems. Particularly within the US, the subculture around such hackers is termed "network hacker subculture", "hacker scene" or "computer underground".
Cracker A Cracker is a person who concentrates on finding weakesses in the security-related parts of software and hardware in order to disable the security and allow unauthorised use. Most activities of the cracker are illegal, however, they often go unprosecuted as the people whose software has been compromised have neither the resources nor the time to persue them.
Phreaker A Phreaker concentrates on finding, and exploiting, the weaknesses in telephone systems.
Open Source An Open Source Hacker is a person who enjoys designing software and building programs with a sense for aesthetics and playful cleverness. These hackers have been responsible for creating the Open Source movement, a collection of computer programmers who collectively write software that is free to use and distribute.
White Hat A White Hat hacker concentrates on finding the weaknesses in systems in order that the systems themselves may be fixed. These hackers are sometimes hired by corporations to find weaknesses in the corporation's own products and so are not prosecuted for their work.
As the number of hackers has increased, and the seriousness of the hacker's crimes has also increased, groups of programmers within US Academia and the homebrew clubs[Note 7] have been trying to distiguish and distance themselves from the criminal hackers and the criminal image of hacking. These groups are trying to reestablish the use of the general word "hacker" in its original sense - i.e. as a person who exercises great skill in creating or modifying software and getting the maximum benefit out of it. To read about this discussion in detail, please read Hacker Definition Controversy.
Tools of the hacker
There are many tools and techniques that the Hacker uses to engage in his or her activities, and new methods are being continuously being devised and discovered. Each method is designed to exploit a particular kind of weakness and a hacker may use one method, or many methods in combination with each other, to achieve their objective.
Although there are many different tools for hacking, most can be grouped together into a small number of distinct categories which are listed below:Tool Explanation
Trojan Horse What is it? A Trojan Horse is any piece of software that gives the impression it is doing a particular task when, in fact, it is secretly performing a much more malicious task. The software will often look appealing and is designed to be welcoming, however this is merely a trick to divert the attention of the user while the real malicous work is being secretly being performed. The hacker typically uses a Trojan Horse when something needs to be illegally installed on a user's computer, or something needs to be illegally acquired from a user's computer.
Why the name? In Greek Mythology[22], a long war was fought at a city called Troy. The army trying to gain entrance to the city were on a mission to rescue a lady called Helen who was being kept a hostage within the city. After nine years and still no success, a man called Odysseus, a member of the army trying to enter the city, had the idea to build a large wooden horse and offer it as a "gift" to the people of Troy to convince the city's leaders that they had given up. When the horse was completed, it was left outside Troy's city walls and the attacking army returned to their ships and left. Seeing the ships leave, Troy's leaders accepted the horse. However, Odysseus had hidden a group of the army's best soldiers inside the horse. Once inside the city's defensive walls, the soldiers jumped out of the horse and sprung their attack on the city from the inside, surprising their opposition and rescuing Helen. Thus, software that copies Odysseus's technique of using a disguise to hide the real task to be done is called a Trojan Horse.
Example Spyware is a common type of Trojan Horse. Spyware is software that gives the impression it is offering some kind of (often free) service but is actually secretly stealing personal information from the user's computer and transmitting it over the internet to another location. After the hacker steals the information, they either use it to perform more malicous deeds against the user or they just sell it on for profit.
Virus What is it? A virus is a piece of software that can copy itself and then transmit itself to another computer, where it then copies itself again. The virus is normally embedded into another piece of software (the host software) and is therefore hidden from view. Once embedded inside the host software, the virus uses the normal functions of the host software to copy itself, only becoming visible when the copies of the virus are transmitted to other computers. The chain of replication is normally very difficult to break and the number of computers that become infected with such software can increase very rapidly. As a virus relies on the host software to function, viruses can be very small programs and can be very simple to create. The hacker favours viruses when small size and simplicity are desired.
Why the name? In the human body, viruses operate by hiding inside cells so that they become hidden from the view of the body's natural defences[23]. They either copy themselves inside the cell, or they sleep and are copied when the cell naturally copies itself. After the virus has been copied many times through either method, each separate copy of the virus leaves its host cell and then goes to find a new cell, starting the cycle again. The virus only becomes visible when the copies exit the host cell, not while it's being copied. This means the body's natural defenses are sometimes not able to detect the virus until copies of the virus are too numerous to stop.
Example Email "Address Book" viruses were, and still are, amongst the most common of software viruses. The virus uses the address book of a user's email application to target users that it will infect next. The virus then attaches itself to an email and uses the normal functions of the email application to email a copy of itself to each selected target. When the virus email is received, the virus relies on the email application to copy itself again (for example, when the user opens the email). Users who often believe they are safe by not opening the email's contents (e.g. an attachment) unknowingly help the virus to spread just by opening the email. A hacker uses a virus to deliver some kind of message or program to the largest number of computers in the smallest amount of time. After the computers have been infected, the hacker may use the delivered messages or programs to perform additional damage to infected computers.
Worms What is it? A worm is a piece of software that can copy itself and then transmit itself to another computer, where it copies itself again. A worm is different from a virus in that it does not need to rely on host software to spread. A worm contains all of the copying function within itself. A hacker uses a worm to alter or disable a computer's functions without causing the computer to stop or display any kind of physical problem and this means that the effects of a worm can go unnoticed for a significant amount of time. During this time, the computer may become vulnerable to, or a participant in, an external attack by the hacker who is then able to exploit the computer to gain unauthorised access or to perform some other malicious action.
Why the name? John Brunner wrote a novel in 1975 called The Shockwave Rider [24], in which he described the idea of a Computer Tapeworm based on the biological Tapeworm parasite. Brunner's worms entered a computer system and lived invisibly within a computer, spreading themselves by attaching to any kind of data that was transmitted to another machine. In 1978[25], two reseachers at Xerox, in Palo Alto, California, USA, actually wrote a worm program to usefully utilise a computer system's "spare" resources at the times when a system was not 100% busy[26]. The worm used only the spare resources to do useful work, and to spread itself to other computers so that more work could be done. However, now worms often use a computer's spare resources in order to perform malicous tasks like launching attacks on other computers, or consuming more resources than are actually available (causing the infected computer to operate many times slower).
Example In 2003, a worm called Blaster[27] was created which copied itself when the computer was connected to the internet, even if the user was not actually performing an internet-related action. The worm activities went unnoticed on millions of users' computers as most of the time it did no real work; the worm was just waiting until a pre-programmed time. The actual effect of the worm was that computers infected with the worm waited until August 15th 2003 at which time they all attacked Microsoft Corporation's Online Update website in unison in order to try and disrupt Microsoft's services.
Influence of hackers on everyday society
The effect of hackers on the way we live our lives has been significant. Software, although reliable at performing the same task identically millions and millions of times, now has to be protected against hackers who want to modify it so it repeatedly performs a different, often malicious, task. Furthermore, as the protection that is used is itself a target for the hackers, technology that can automatically detect when the security has been broken has also had to be developed (for example, a CD player detects when a copy of a CD is being played instead of the original purchased CD).
In the modern world, software is operating every minute of every day making sure that actions performed by machines on behalf of individuals are only performed when properly authorised to do so. For example, the action of withdrawing money from a bank using a card must only be done by the authorised card holder, and special software in the form of smart cards attempts to protect stolen bank cards from being used. Another example might be a company who wants to protect the copyright of its products and in this case the software could be protecting the product from being copied illegally, or from being used in a manner that the company explicitly forbids (like using a mobile phone handset on another company's network). At the same time, however, hackers are trying their best to devise new techniques based on Trojan Horses, Viruses, and Worms to find and exploit weaknesses in software so that they can use your stolen bank card or they can use that mobile phone on another provider's network. Thanks to the skill and expertise of engineers in the IT industry, though, this conflict remains largely hidden and does not affect normal people in all but the most extreme cases.
As hackers' techniques advance further still[28], software design is also advancing so that software can withstand the attempts of hackers to reverse engineer or modify the software. One of the biggest challenges facing all sections of the computer industry is how to implement software so that the copyright of works, or access to personal information, can be protected from hackers without making software products so complicated that they become unusable, bringing the lives and jobs of ordinary people to a standstill.
gain further knowledge about the internal workings of the software or hardware,
gain access to some previously locked or hidden function of the software or hardware,
disable some previously functioning part of the software or hardware so that it no longer works in the way it was originally intended, or
command the software or hardware to perform an additional task that it was not originally designed to do.
As a hacker's activities commonly (but not always) involve reverse engineering[Note 8] or direct modification of the software or hardware without the manufacturer's knowledge or authorisation, hacking often violates existing Copyright and Patent laws[1] in many countries. A hacker's activities also frequently include the exploitation of a weakness in software or hardware to, for example, command the software or hardware to perform a malicious action against an individual or organisation. While reverse engineering software or hardware to gain further knowledge about its internal may not be considered a crime, malicious acts arising from the exploitation of any weaknesses found are considered crimes and are even considered as terrorist acts in some countries[2]. For these reasons, hacking, the activity of a hacker, is considered a crime under law in most countries, especially under United States Law. Numerous hackers have been, and continue to be, prosecuted[3][4] for their actions, some even becoming infamous through the reporting of their activities in the media.
The word Hacker is a general term within the field of computing and there are more specific terms in use, particularly just within the United States, to describe the different types of hackers and the different kinds of software and hardware that they find weaknesses in. These different types of hackers are listed briefly in Section 6 of this arcticle, however, to read in detail about these different kinds of hackers, please consult Hacker (disambiguation) or Hacking.
Contents :
1 Overview
2 Dawn of the hacker
3 First hardware hackers
4 Emergence of software hackers
5 Difficulties in prosecuting hackers
6 Evolution of the hacker
7 Tools of the hacker
8 Influence of hackers on everyday society
9 References
10 Notes
11 External links
Overview
The hacker of the late 1950s to the early 1970s was originally known for applying expertise and skill to getting the maximum benefit out of hardware and software. These hackers were computer enthusiasts who were highly respected and their skills helped the software and hardware industries to advance very quickly in the early days of computing. However, hackers in general quickly became associated with crime as some of them applied their considerable expertise to illegal activities such as:
the theft of assets (e.g. money[5] or information[6])
the use of services (e.g. telephones) without paying, and
performing malicious deeds against, or causing material damage to, corporations and government institutions (e.g. espionage[7][Note 3]).
Within the Computer User clubs and IT-related Universities in the United States of America, there is currently a debate about the usage of the word hacker within US Academia and there is a proposal that it should only be associated with its original expertise-oriented meaning. To read in detail about this debate, and the issues involved, please see the article Hacker Definition Controversy.
Dawn of the hacker
As early as the mid 1940s, the American Government was sponsoring projects to build huge mainframe computers to forward research into processors and possible applications of those processors. One such project was a US Navy contract initiated during World War II for a flight simulator computer. The computer took so long to design that, by the time the designs were completed, the war was over and the US Navy had lost interest in the project[8]. However, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, took over the designs and built just the computer. The result was the MIT Whirlwind computer. The MIT Whirwind computer is said to have been the first ever computer to have a full-screen graphical display and it was this feature that led programmers of the huge mainframe (four floors of a two-storey building) to exercise their skills and stretch the capabilities of the computer to perform tasks that it was not originally designed to do. One such programmer, George Yale Cherlin, Ph.D, became famous amongst the Whirlwind project's 175 staff when he and some colleagues together managed to use the military-designed mainframe to create a graphical, real-time, simulation of the physics of a bouncing rubber ball[8]. Cherlin's expertise in programming at that time can certainly be considered one of the earliest acts of hacking in the original good sense of the word.
First hardware hackers
While US universities, like MITs Artifical Intelligence Laboratory, continued to push the boundaries of processors and the software running on those processors, industrial applications of the new technology were also being pushed. However, while software was advancing at a very fast pace, the first recorded hacking attempts were on simpler electronic machines that were designed to perform only a single task. Among the first such machines were the part electronic/part mechanical US telephone exchanges and it was in the late 1950s that a young boy called Joe Engressia[Note 4] first managed to hack one of these exchanges.[9]
Engressia was born in 1949 and was blind from birth[10]. As a result of this, however, he was endowed with other amazing talents, one of which was Perfect Pitch. Perfect Pitch is the ability to be able to repeatedly, and exactly, generate a tone of any frequency through singing or whistling. He discovered by accident at the age of just eight years old that the US long-distance[Note 1] telephone exchanges responded to a special "line-idle tone", a 2600Hz frequency tone internal to exchanges that indicated a long-distance line was available for use[10]. The tone was important as it was used by the exchanges to detect when calls had finished, and therefore was used to calculate telephone bills. If a freephone[Note 5] number was dialled, the local exchange would search for an available long-distance line and mark the call as free. Once the long-distance line had been found, generating the 2600Hz idle tone would make the long-distance exchange think the line was idle and it would stop billing the call. However, the local exchange was still connected and any number dialled would then not be billed. Every time Engressia wanted to make a free long-distance call, he would simply whistle into the telephone receiver and receive his free call.
Soon after, in the early 1970s, another man called John Draper discovered the same tone was generated by a toy whistle that came free with boxes of breakfast cereal[11]. Draper blew the whistle into a telephone receiver and also received free calls. Draper become somewhat infamous for envanglesing the technology to be able to cheat the telephone companies without actually using the technology himself. He even gave hacking classes and workshops to his fellow inmates whilst in jail and gave practical demonstrations of his hacking techniques using prison telephones[11].
Both Engressia and Draper were arrested and convicted (Draper on multiple occasions) for their hacking of US telephone exchanges and even became infamous in the local newspapers of the time. Engressia died on August 8th, 2007[9][Note 4], however, both Engressia's and Draper's activities inspired a whole division of hacking focussed on telephone systems that would later be called Phreaking.
Emergence of software hackers
During the 1960s and 1970s, computers were too expensive to buy for the majority of normal people. However, this all changed in the late 1970s and the 1980s with the worldwide home computer revolution. Corporations and individuals alike rushed to create machines for hobbyists to use and experiment with in their own homes and many brands like Apple, Commodore, and Tandy/Radio Shack were born. Many hobbyists rushed out to buy a computer and one such person was a young boy called Kevin Mitnick.
Long before he used a computer, Mitnick had already been involved in hacking when in 1976, at the age of just 13, he managed to hack the bus ticket system in his hometown of Los Angeles, USA to get free bus rides[12]. The system relied on tickets with punched holes in them and Mitnick, using his own specially-made hole punch, was able to cheat ticket machines and travel to any destination he wanted within the Los Angeles area free of charge. By 1982, at the age of 19, he was proficient enough with a computer to be able to hack into the US Government's North American Aerospace Defense Command system (NORAD), a military surveillance system[12]. Although no damage was done and no criminal charges were brought, it is this incident that is widely believed to have been the inspiration for the 1983 film WarGames, a story about a young boy who hacks into a government computer and accidentally starts a launch countdown for some nuclear missiles. In 1988, however, Mitnick went one step further and hacked into the computers of an IT company and illegally downloaded $1m of the computer company's software[13]. The case, brought to court by the computer manufacturer Digital Equipment Corporation, was sucessfully prosecuted and Mitnick received one year in prison in 1989 for his crime.
Mitnick has been jailed on multiple occasions[12] and his reputation as a hacker, plus the rumour that the 1983 film WarGames was based on Mitnick's own experiences, has turned him into a cult figure. Mitnick, having served his sentences, now provides his skill and expertise as a security consultant for is own legitimate internet security firm. However, Mitnick has found himself, ironically, the victim of several successful hacking attempts[14], bringing much embarassment to the person they once used to call "the most wanted computer hacker in the world"[12].
Difficulties in prosecuting hackers
The 1980s and the 1990s saw a revolutionisation in the computer industry that resulted in computers filling every office and touching every aspect of our lives. Whilst technology has continued to advance to bring the world faster and cheaper computers that are in everything from car engines to mobile phones, and the software security to protect those computers has also been advancing, the hackers have also been evolving their techniques to break the new, stronger security.
In August 2007, a 17-year old teenager named George Hotz hacked a mobile phone so that the software restricting its use to a single mobile phone network was disabled, enabling the phone to be used on any rival mobile phone network[15]. Apple Inc.'s iPhone mobile phone handset was announced in an exclusive partnership will US mobile network provider AT&T Wireless[Note 6] in January 2007[16]. Although software in the handset made sure that the iPhone could only operate on AT&T Wireless's network, the phone presented a challenge to hackers who wanted to use the phone on other providers' networks. Hotz was the first person to hack the phone using a combination of software and hardware modifications and he demonstrated his modified iPhone handset working on AT&T Wireless's rival T-Mobile's network.
Whilst Hotz was congratulated by hacking communities everywhere, Apple and AT&T Wireless were not happy, although Hotz appears to have been spared going to court when he stated in interviews that he didn't want to sell his hack[15]. Instead, he was consulted by Apple as to the nature of the hack and Apple soon released an update to the phone's software that was claimed not to include the weaknesses that Hotz had managed to exploit. However, companies and other hacking firms that did try and sell Hotz's hack were approached by Apple's lawyers who successfully blocked the firms from selling the hack citing copyright infringment and reverse engineering[17], something that is considered illegal through such legislation as the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act [18].
Hotz's actions highlighted the difficulties that software and hardware companies face when trying to prevent hackers from reverse engineering their work. While corporations struggle to protect their inventions and business strategies, hackers everywhere are struggling equally hard to try and reverse engineer those inventions for their own profit or gain. One of the reasons why Hotz wasn't brought to trial was because of sections of the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act[18] that appear to permit software or hardware to be reverse engineered and modified without the original manufacturer's consent, where the modification allows the product to interoperate with other programs[19] in the manner for which it was originally intended[Note 2][20]. This was important, as Apple's iPhone was originally designed to be used on every provider's network in the world although this design was limited to AT&T's network using special security software. Thus, as Hotz's modifications to the iPhone did not change the iPhone's original purpose, and the modifications allowed the phone to interoperate with another provider's network, both Apple and AT&T found it difficult to prosecute the teenager, a situation that neither corporation was happy about.
Increasingly, hackers are avoiding prosecution by being hired by corporations to deliberately find the weaknesses in their software or hardware as this is often cheaper than having their system breached and losing the confidence of customers[21]. Hotz is one such person who, by agreeing to co-operate with Apple in explaining the nature of his hack, caused both Hotz and Apple to benefit from what was initially a very serious situation.
Evolution of the hacker
As the software industry has evolved over time, it has become an industry with many different areas of expertise. Along with the expansion of the industry has come an expansion in the number of specific terms in use, particularly just within the United States, to describe the different types of hackers and the different kinds of software and hardware that they focus on.
The different types of hacker that exist today are listed in the table below.Hacker Type Explanation
Black Hat A Black Hat hacker concentrates on finding, and exploiting, the weaknesses in systems in order to perform malicious acts or to cause some kind of injury. All activities of the Black Hat hackers are considered crimes and so, where possible, prosecutions have, and continue to be, brought against this kind of hacker.
Computer Security A Computer Security Hacker is someone who specializes in work with the security mechanisms for computer and network systems. Particularly within the US, the subculture around such hackers is termed "network hacker subculture", "hacker scene" or "computer underground".
Cracker A Cracker is a person who concentrates on finding weakesses in the security-related parts of software and hardware in order to disable the security and allow unauthorised use. Most activities of the cracker are illegal, however, they often go unprosecuted as the people whose software has been compromised have neither the resources nor the time to persue them.
Phreaker A Phreaker concentrates on finding, and exploiting, the weaknesses in telephone systems.
Open Source An Open Source Hacker is a person who enjoys designing software and building programs with a sense for aesthetics and playful cleverness. These hackers have been responsible for creating the Open Source movement, a collection of computer programmers who collectively write software that is free to use and distribute.
White Hat A White Hat hacker concentrates on finding the weaknesses in systems in order that the systems themselves may be fixed. These hackers are sometimes hired by corporations to find weaknesses in the corporation's own products and so are not prosecuted for their work.
As the number of hackers has increased, and the seriousness of the hacker's crimes has also increased, groups of programmers within US Academia and the homebrew clubs[Note 7] have been trying to distiguish and distance themselves from the criminal hackers and the criminal image of hacking. These groups are trying to reestablish the use of the general word "hacker" in its original sense - i.e. as a person who exercises great skill in creating or modifying software and getting the maximum benefit out of it. To read about this discussion in detail, please read Hacker Definition Controversy.
Tools of the hacker
There are many tools and techniques that the Hacker uses to engage in his or her activities, and new methods are being continuously being devised and discovered. Each method is designed to exploit a particular kind of weakness and a hacker may use one method, or many methods in combination with each other, to achieve their objective.
Although there are many different tools for hacking, most can be grouped together into a small number of distinct categories which are listed below:Tool Explanation
Trojan Horse What is it? A Trojan Horse is any piece of software that gives the impression it is doing a particular task when, in fact, it is secretly performing a much more malicious task. The software will often look appealing and is designed to be welcoming, however this is merely a trick to divert the attention of the user while the real malicous work is being secretly being performed. The hacker typically uses a Trojan Horse when something needs to be illegally installed on a user's computer, or something needs to be illegally acquired from a user's computer.
Why the name? In Greek Mythology[22], a long war was fought at a city called Troy. The army trying to gain entrance to the city were on a mission to rescue a lady called Helen who was being kept a hostage within the city. After nine years and still no success, a man called Odysseus, a member of the army trying to enter the city, had the idea to build a large wooden horse and offer it as a "gift" to the people of Troy to convince the city's leaders that they had given up. When the horse was completed, it was left outside Troy's city walls and the attacking army returned to their ships and left. Seeing the ships leave, Troy's leaders accepted the horse. However, Odysseus had hidden a group of the army's best soldiers inside the horse. Once inside the city's defensive walls, the soldiers jumped out of the horse and sprung their attack on the city from the inside, surprising their opposition and rescuing Helen. Thus, software that copies Odysseus's technique of using a disguise to hide the real task to be done is called a Trojan Horse.
Example Spyware is a common type of Trojan Horse. Spyware is software that gives the impression it is offering some kind of (often free) service but is actually secretly stealing personal information from the user's computer and transmitting it over the internet to another location. After the hacker steals the information, they either use it to perform more malicous deeds against the user or they just sell it on for profit.
Virus What is it? A virus is a piece of software that can copy itself and then transmit itself to another computer, where it then copies itself again. The virus is normally embedded into another piece of software (the host software) and is therefore hidden from view. Once embedded inside the host software, the virus uses the normal functions of the host software to copy itself, only becoming visible when the copies of the virus are transmitted to other computers. The chain of replication is normally very difficult to break and the number of computers that become infected with such software can increase very rapidly. As a virus relies on the host software to function, viruses can be very small programs and can be very simple to create. The hacker favours viruses when small size and simplicity are desired.
Why the name? In the human body, viruses operate by hiding inside cells so that they become hidden from the view of the body's natural defences[23]. They either copy themselves inside the cell, or they sleep and are copied when the cell naturally copies itself. After the virus has been copied many times through either method, each separate copy of the virus leaves its host cell and then goes to find a new cell, starting the cycle again. The virus only becomes visible when the copies exit the host cell, not while it's being copied. This means the body's natural defenses are sometimes not able to detect the virus until copies of the virus are too numerous to stop.
Example Email "Address Book" viruses were, and still are, amongst the most common of software viruses. The virus uses the address book of a user's email application to target users that it will infect next. The virus then attaches itself to an email and uses the normal functions of the email application to email a copy of itself to each selected target. When the virus email is received, the virus relies on the email application to copy itself again (for example, when the user opens the email). Users who often believe they are safe by not opening the email's contents (e.g. an attachment) unknowingly help the virus to spread just by opening the email. A hacker uses a virus to deliver some kind of message or program to the largest number of computers in the smallest amount of time. After the computers have been infected, the hacker may use the delivered messages or programs to perform additional damage to infected computers.
Worms What is it? A worm is a piece of software that can copy itself and then transmit itself to another computer, where it copies itself again. A worm is different from a virus in that it does not need to rely on host software to spread. A worm contains all of the copying function within itself. A hacker uses a worm to alter or disable a computer's functions without causing the computer to stop or display any kind of physical problem and this means that the effects of a worm can go unnoticed for a significant amount of time. During this time, the computer may become vulnerable to, or a participant in, an external attack by the hacker who is then able to exploit the computer to gain unauthorised access or to perform some other malicious action.
Why the name? John Brunner wrote a novel in 1975 called The Shockwave Rider [24], in which he described the idea of a Computer Tapeworm based on the biological Tapeworm parasite. Brunner's worms entered a computer system and lived invisibly within a computer, spreading themselves by attaching to any kind of data that was transmitted to another machine. In 1978[25], two reseachers at Xerox, in Palo Alto, California, USA, actually wrote a worm program to usefully utilise a computer system's "spare" resources at the times when a system was not 100% busy[26]. The worm used only the spare resources to do useful work, and to spread itself to other computers so that more work could be done. However, now worms often use a computer's spare resources in order to perform malicous tasks like launching attacks on other computers, or consuming more resources than are actually available (causing the infected computer to operate many times slower).
Example In 2003, a worm called Blaster[27] was created which copied itself when the computer was connected to the internet, even if the user was not actually performing an internet-related action. The worm activities went unnoticed on millions of users' computers as most of the time it did no real work; the worm was just waiting until a pre-programmed time. The actual effect of the worm was that computers infected with the worm waited until August 15th 2003 at which time they all attacked Microsoft Corporation's Online Update website in unison in order to try and disrupt Microsoft's services.
Influence of hackers on everyday society
The effect of hackers on the way we live our lives has been significant. Software, although reliable at performing the same task identically millions and millions of times, now has to be protected against hackers who want to modify it so it repeatedly performs a different, often malicious, task. Furthermore, as the protection that is used is itself a target for the hackers, technology that can automatically detect when the security has been broken has also had to be developed (for example, a CD player detects when a copy of a CD is being played instead of the original purchased CD).
In the modern world, software is operating every minute of every day making sure that actions performed by machines on behalf of individuals are only performed when properly authorised to do so. For example, the action of withdrawing money from a bank using a card must only be done by the authorised card holder, and special software in the form of smart cards attempts to protect stolen bank cards from being used. Another example might be a company who wants to protect the copyright of its products and in this case the software could be protecting the product from being copied illegally, or from being used in a manner that the company explicitly forbids (like using a mobile phone handset on another company's network). At the same time, however, hackers are trying their best to devise new techniques based on Trojan Horses, Viruses, and Worms to find and exploit weaknesses in software so that they can use your stolen bank card or they can use that mobile phone on another provider's network. Thanks to the skill and expertise of engineers in the IT industry, though, this conflict remains largely hidden and does not affect normal people in all but the most extreme cases.
As hackers' techniques advance further still[28], software design is also advancing so that software can withstand the attempts of hackers to reverse engineer or modify the software. One of the biggest challenges facing all sections of the computer industry is how to implement software so that the copyright of works, or access to personal information, can be protected from hackers without making software products so complicated that they become unusable, bringing the lives and jobs of ordinary people to a standstill.
PAYPAL
PAYPAL PayPal is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. It serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as cheques and money orders. PayPal performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other corporate users, for which it charges a fee. On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay.[1] Its corporate headquarters are in San Jose, California, United States at eBay's North First Street satellite office campus. The company also has significant operations in Omaha, Nebraska, Scottsdale, Arizona and Austin, Texas in the U.S.; India, Dublin, Ireland; and Berlin, Germany.[2]
History
Beginnings
PayPal is the result of a March 2000 merger between Confinity and X.com.[3] Confinity was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, initially as a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company.[4] Both Confinity and X.com launched their websites in late 1999. X.com was founded by Elon Musk in March 1999, initially as an Internet financial services company. Both companies were located on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Confinity's website was initially focused on reconciling beamed payments from Palm Pilots [5] with email payments as a feature and X.com's website initially included financial services with email payments as a feature.
At Confinity, many of the initial recruits were alumni of The Stanford Review, also founded by Peter Thiel, and most early engineers hailed from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recruited by Max Levchin. On the X.com side, Elon Musk recruited a wide range of technical and business personnel, including many that were critical to the combined company's success, such as Amy Klement, Sal Giambanco, Roelof Botha [6] of Sequoia Capital, Sanjay Bhargava and Jeremy Stoppelman.[7]
To block potentially fraudulent access by automated systems, PayPal devised a system (see CAPTCHA) of making the user enter numbers from a blurry picture, which they coined the Gausebeck-Levchin test. According to Eric M. Jackson, author of the book The PayPal Wars, PayPal invented this system now in common use; however, there is evidence AltaVista used a CAPTCHA as early as 1997, before PayPal existed.[citation needed] The neutrality of The PayPal Wars, which was self-published by Eric Jackson through his company World Ahead Publishing, funded in part by Peter Thiel, is disputed.
eBay watched the rise in volume of online payments and realized its fit with online auctions. eBay purchased Billpoint in May 1999, prior to the existence of PayPal. eBay made Billpoint the official payment system of eBay, dubbing it "eBay Payments", but cut the functionality of Billpoint by narrowing it to only payments made for eBay auctions.
For this reason, PayPal was listed in several times as many auctions as Billpoint. In February of 2000, there were approximately an average of 200,000 daily auctions advertising the PayPal service while Billpoint (in beta) had only 4,000 auctions. By April of 2000 there were more than 1,000,000 auctions promoting the PayPal service. PayPal was able to turn the corner and become the first dot-com to IPO after the September 11 attacks.
Acquisition by eBay
In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion.[8] PayPal had previously been the payment method of choice by more than fifty percent of eBay users, and the service competed with eBay’s subsidiary Billpoint. eBay has since phased out its Billpoint service in favor of retaining the PayPal brand. Most of PayPal’s major competitors have shut down or have been sold; Citibank’s c2it service closed in late 2003, and Yahoo!'s PayDirect service closed in late 2004. Western Union announced the December 2005 shut down of their BidPay service but subsequently sold it in 2006 to CyberSource Corporation. BidPay announced it will cease all operations on December 31st, 2007. Some competitors which offer some of PayPal’s services, such as Wirecard, Moneybookers, 2Checkout, CCNow and Kagi, remain in business.
PayPal’s total payment volume, the total value of transactions in Q4 2006, was US$11 billion, up 36% year over year. The company continues to focus on international growth and growth of its Merchant Services division, providing online payments for retailers off eBay.
Business today
As of the end of Q4 2006, PayPal operates in 103 markets, and it manages over 155 million accounts. PayPal allows customers to send, receive, and hold funds in 17 currencies worldwide. These currencies are the U.S. dollar, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, Euro, Pound sterling, Japanese yen, Chinese renminbi, Czech Koruna, Danish krone, Hong Kong dollar, Hungarian forint, New Zealand dollar, Norwegian krone, Polish zloty, Singapore dollar, Swedish krona, and Swiss franc. PayPal operates locally in 13 countries.
Residents in 48 new markets can now use PayPal in their local markets to send money online. These new markets include Peru, Indonesia, the Philippines, Croatia, Fiji, Vietnam and Jordan. A complete list can be viewed at PayPal's website.
In China PayPal offers two kinds of accounts:
PayPal.com accounts, for sending and receiving money to/from other PayPal.com accounts. All non-Chinese accounts are PayPal.com accounts, so these accounts may be used to send money internationally.
PayPal.cn accounts, for sending and receiving money to and from other PayPal.cn accounts.
It is impossible to send money between PayPal.cn accounts and PayPal.com accounts, so PayPal.cn accounts are effectively unable to make international payments. For PayPal.cn, the only supported currency is the renminbi.
Although PayPal's corporate headquarters are located in San Jose, PayPal’s operations center is located near Omaha, Nebraska, where the company employs more than 2,000 people as of 2007.[9] PayPal’s international headquarters is located in Dublin, Ireland. The company also recently opened a technology center in Scottsdale, Arizona.
PayPal's headquarters in San Jose were hit by a small bomb on the evening of Halloween 2006 which shattered a window but caused no injuries.[10]
Bank status
In the United States, PayPal is licensed as a money transmitter on a state-by-state basis.[citation needed] Although PayPal is not a bank, the company is still subject to many of the rules and regulations governing the financial industry including Regulation E consumer protections and the USA PATRIOT Act.[citation needed] However, on May 15, 2007, PayPal announced that it would move its European operations from the UK to Luxembourg, commencing July 2, 2007 as PayPal (Europe) S.à r.l. & Cie, S.C.A.[citation needed] This would be as a Luxembourg entity regulated as a bank by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), the Luxembourg equivalent of the FSA.[citation needed] PayPal Luxembourg will then provide the PayPal service throughout the European Union (EU).
Safety and protection policies
The PayPal Buyer Protection Policy states that customers may file a buyer complaint within 45 days if they did not receive an item or if the item they purchased was significantly not as described. If the buyer used a credit card, they might get a refund via charge back from their credit card company.
According to PayPal, it protects sellers in a limited fashion via the Seller Protection Policy [11]. In general the Seller Protection Policy is intended to protect the seller from certain kinds of chargebacks or complaints if seller meets certain conditions including proof of delivery to the buyer. PayPal states the Seller Protection Policy is "designed to protect sellers against claims by buyers of unauthorized payments and against claims of non-receipt of any merchandise". Note that this contrasts with the consumer protection they claim to offer. This policy should be read carefully before assuming protection. In particular the Seller Protection Policy includes a list of "Exclusions" which itself includes "Intangible goods", "Claims for receipt of goods 'not as described'" and "Total reversals over the annual limit". There are also other restrictions in terms of the sale itself, the payment method and the destination country the item is shipped to (simply having a tracking mechanism is not sufficient to guarantee the Seller Protection Policy is in effect).[12]
Security
Security key
In early 2007, PayPal introduced an optional security key to its users. This adds an additional layer of protection when logging into a PayPal or eBay account. Once a user enters their login ID and password, they are prompted to press a button on the small security key, then enter the six-digit number to complete the login process. There is a one-time US$5 charge for this device, with no ongoing fees; however, business accounts get them free of charge.[13]
Phishing
PayPal has developed substantial anti-Phishing resources[14], for identifying and reporting phishing, and offers its US customers free credit monitoring.
Entrepreneurship by former employees
A number of companies have been started and funded by former PayPal employees. This trend prompted The New York Times to publish a story entitled "It Pays to Have Pals in Silicon Valley" that analyzes the connections between several PayPal employees who went on to become influential.[15]
LinkedIn was founded by Reid Hoffman, a former VP at PayPal.
Facebook received its first angel investment from Peter Thiel.
Clarium Capital Management is a hedge fund run by Peter Thiel. Principal partners at Clarium include Ken Howery and Luke Nosek, both of whom were among the earliest employees at PayPal.
Palantir Technologies was founded by Nathan Gettings, who developed PayPal's anti-fraud models. Palantir received funding from Peter Thiel.
Slide was founded by Max Levchin, Jared Kopf, and former PayPal board member Scott Banister.
Yelp was founded by Jeremy Stoppelmann, former VP of Engineering at PayPal, and Russ Simmons, one of the first employees at PayPal. Yelp is funded by Max Levchin.
YouTube (now owned by Google) was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, all of whom were early employees at PayPal. YouTube is funded by Sequoia Capital. Roelof Botha, the former CFO of PayPal, is a partner of Sequoia Capital who sits on YouTube's board of directors.
Room 9 Entertainment, which produced the movie Thank You for Smoking, was founded by David O. Sacks, who founded PayPal's Product Group and later served as Chief Operating Officer (COO).
Geni.com was also founded by David O. Sacks.
SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk, who founded X.com and served as the CEO following its merger with PayPal.
Fraudwall Technologies is run by Ken Miller, who was VP of Risk Management at PayPal and the architect of PayPal's anti-fraud system.
Tesla Motors' principal owner and Chairman of the Board is Elon Musk.
Criticism
In September 2005, the owner of the website Something Awful, Richard Kyanka, set up an account to collect donations for Hurricane Katrina, to be given to the Red Cross. Due to the high rate at which donations were made, the account was automatically frozen, and Kyanka criticized the time and difficulty involved in getting PayPal's customer service to unfreeze the account. In response to the concerns of Something Awful members over the charity used by Paypal, United Way, Kyanka finally opted to have the money refunded to the donors so that they could donate directly to their charities of choice.[16][17]
Litigation
In March 2002, two PayPal account holders separately sued the company for alleged violations of the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA) and California law. Most of the allegations concerned PayPal's dispute resolution procedures. The two lawsuits were merged into one class action lawsuit (In re PayPal litigation). An informal settlement was reached in November 2003, and a formal settlement was signed on June 11, 2004. The settlement requires that PayPal change its business practices (including changing its dispute resolution procedures to make them EFTA-compliant), as well as making a US$9.25 million payment to members of the class. PayPal denied any wrongdoing.
In August 2002, Craig Comb and others filed a class action against PayPal in Craig Comb, et al. v. PayPal, Inc.. They sued for alleged mishandling of customer accounts and customer services, with regards to PayPal's user agreement. Allegations included restricting deposited funds for up to 180 days until disputes are resolved, forcing customers to arbitrate their disputes under the American Arbitration Association's guidelines (a costly procedure), and requiring users to file claims individually, restricting class action suits. The court stated that "the User Agreement and arbitration clause are substantively unconscionable under California law" and ruled in favor of Comb.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
WELCOME TO CIREBON
This Blogger is about the city of Cirebon. For the regency, see Cirebon Regency.
Cirebon (formerly Cheribon) is a city on north coast of the Indonesian island of Java. It is located in West Java province, approximately 297 km east of Jakarta, at 6°43′S, 108°34′E.
Etymology
Its name is often said to be derived from the Sundanese words of "Cai" (or river) and "Rebon" (or "shrimp"). (Indeed the main production of the city is fishery including shrimps.) The alternative Javanese derivation is from "Caruban", meaning "mixture"--a reference to Cirebon's complex mix of Javanese, Malay, Sundanese, Chinese and Arabic cultural elements. While Indonesians from outside of Cirebon pronounce the name CHEE-ray-bone, locals say Cher-BONE.
Aside from fishery, its harbour, Tanjung Emas, to the Java Sea has been a major hub for timbers from Borneo. A small landing site "Penggung" also serves the AURI. The city also lies on the major connection road in the north coast of Java, spans from Anyer passing through Jakarta and ends at Surabaya. This road called Jalur Pantura ( Pantai Utara Jawa ).
History
Cirebon was part of Sunda kingdom as stated on travel records of Prince Bujangga Manik, a Hindu Sundanese monk who visited all of the holy Hindu sites in Java and Bali islands at the beginning of the sixteenth century AD, in his lontar manuscripts, which are saved in Boelian Library of Oxford University of England since the 16th century, the border of the Sunda kingdom in the west is Sunda Streats and in the east is Cipamali river (present day kali Brebes) and Ciserayu river (presend day kali Serayu) in Central Java Province.[1]
Other source proclaiming the fact is a report from Tome Peres, a European explorers. He wrote in his report:
Demographics & Culture
The city population is 223,776.[citation needed] Similar with other coastal cities in Indonesia, a large population of ethnic Chinese flocked into the city as a result of long-term Chinese immigration since the seventeenth century.
Cirebon itself is known as Grage in the Cirebon dialect of Javanese language, which came from the words "Negara Gede", meaning "Great Kingdom."
Although surrounded by Sundanese-speaking areas in West Java, linguists have stated clearly that Cirebon (and the historically related region of Banten) are Javanese language areas. In addition, this is supported by Cirebon people referring to themselves as "wong Jawa" ("Javanese people"), and to their language as "basa Jawa" ("Javanese"). However, the Cirebon dialect is sufficiently different from the dominant south central Javanese dialect that it is sometimes assumed to be non-Javanese by outsiders. See also: Java, languages map.
As a coastal city, Cirebon's main industry is fishery. Its products include terasi (shrimp paste), shrimp crackers and salted fish. Cirebon is known for local foods, such as nasi lengko (rice mixed with bean sprouts, fried tofu and fermented soybean cake), nasi jamblang (rice of various side dishes), empal gentong ( a kind of curry ), tahu gejrot (fried tofu with red sugar topping), tahu tek-tek (fried tofu topped with peanut sauce and mixed with vegetables) and ayam panggang (barbecue chicken). Other native food is "Docang" (rice cake with sour vegetable soup).
Administration
Cirebon is divided into five subdistricts: Harjamukti, Kejaksan, Kesambi, Lemahwungkuk, and Pekalipan.
History
A major event in Cirebon's colonial history was the massive famine of 1844, apparently triggered by a combination of drought and the shift from subsistence agriculture to cash crops, particularly indigo and sugarcane, that had begun as a result of Dutch colonial policy (see Cultivation System) in the 1830s.
Notable places
Wali Songo, especially Sunan Gunung Jati, is known to have influenced the city history. Sunan Gunung Jati's grave is located several kilometres outside the city, in a district called Gunung Jati. There are two temples and a cave system built by two Chinese architects around 1880s, decorated by Chinese and Western porcelain. Trusmi village, about five kilometers outside of Cirebon, is famous for batik production. Plangon is a habitat of monkeys.
Karaton Kasepuhan, Karaton Kacirebonan, Karaton Kanoman are Sultan Palaces in Cirebon.
References Indonesia Portal
Graaf, H. J. de (Hermanus Johannes), 1899-(?), "Chinese Muslims in Java in the 15th and 16th centuries : the Malay Annals of Semarang and Cerbon / translated and provided with comments by H.J. de Graaf and Th.G.Th. Pigeaud ; edited by M.C. Ricklefs. Publisher: [Melbourne] : Monash University, 1984. Description: xiii, 221 p. : folded map ; 21 cm. ISBN 0867464194 : Series: Monash papers on Southeast Asia ; no. 12
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)